From: Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill)
Subject: Re: Crop circles: natural or human-made?
Organization: University of Tasmania (Australia)
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 03:55:22 GMT

In article <Bt758M.2J6@mtholyoke.edu>, jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:

> On the other hand, the Mandlebrot set is a "natural phenomenon", and
> compared to the other more complex crop-circle shapes it seems to me
> that the Mandelbrot shape is actually a more likely candidate for
> natural occurrance.  At least it's symmetrical, and after all, since
> the discovery of dynamical systems and chaos it has been found that
> nature has a tendency to organize itself in fractal (or chaotic)
> shapes.

I don't know enough about chaos theory and its attendant mathmatics to
be absolutely sure, but I was under the impression that the Mandlebrot
Set was a purely mathmatical construct. I don't know of anywhere where
it appears as a 'natural phenomenon'. 

If I remember correctly, someone posted a message here a few months ago
concerning Mandlebrot's own opinion of the 'Mandlebrot Circle'. He pointed
out that it was a rather poor representation of a Mandlebrot set and I 
think it was he that commented that the circle would be more impressive 
if it had appeared *before* we humans had discovered this form. The fact 
that it appeared not only *after* we did so, but also after chaos theory
and fractal forms had attracted a lot of public exposure, makes it very
suspicious. (The circle's proximity to Cambridge University and it's
renowned maths department is also interesting.)
 
> Anyway, I saw the same TV show, and I have to admit that it did stir
> my interest.  They made some pretty strong arguments that it was
> rather unlikely that the crop-circles were made by humans... for one
> they said that the recent frequency of appearance alone would make it
> difficult unless there were "a whole army of crop-circle makers out
> there" (loose quote).

Is there anything to rule this out? There hasn't really been that many 
of them and they are easy to make. I myself know two hoaxers, and there
are sure to be many more. Isn't it also interesting that they seem to
appear in certain areas; possibly because several independant groups of
hoaxers are working together, are inspired by each others work and are
encouraged by the media attention which then gets focused on these
'centres of crop circle activity'.

> Then there are the slight burns on the affected
> plants which would point to a source of energy that would be difficult
> to use in such a controlled fashion by human technology, and the
> alleged discovery of genetic alterations in the wheat germs.

'Alledged' is the operative word here. We've all heard these claims, but
but we see little or no evidence. They are like the 'thousands' of
circles which are supposedly seen by spy satellites all the time. Circle
proponents tell us about them, but I've never seen them actually produce
any proof. The Wessex Skeptics in England went over several hundred
archological survey photos of cornfields looking for evidence of crop
circles prior to 1985. They found none.

> The TV show mentioned above was your standard sensationalist
> TV-tabloid fare, but I'd be very interested in the opinions of some
> hardened skeptics in this newsgroup...

I'm not a hardened skeptic, I'm an opened minded one. In fact, I doubt
if any of us are 'hardened skeptics'. What is a 'hardened skeptic'? 
(No obscene replies please, this is a family newsgroup.)
Tim O'Neill
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic