UFOs in Reality (9 page)
Authors: T.R. Dutton
The ‘White Crow’ experiences provided valuable contributions to my understanding of the circles phenomenon and they were to be supplemented by other experiences during the 1990s. However, even before the ‘White Crow’ episode, I had been pondering the possible causes of that double-ringed circular formation of the previous year, but had found no satisfactory explanation. I had looked for analogous phenomena that might provide a model to work with. One such model arose from the sharp-edged boundaries of that Danebury Rings
formation. Surely a natural atmospheric vortex could not have produced such precision. In fact, the only kind of swirling flow I could envisage was that produced in the wake of an airscrew propeller. During discussions about the modelling of such flow with my colleagues in the BAe Future Projects Dept., I discovered that one of them, Mark Metcalfe, had presented a paper on the topic
[3]
. Mark very helpfully let me have a copy of his work and I began work at home trying to understand it and to produce, mathematically and with diagrams, typical cross-sections of the flow being modelled. The results are shown by Figs. 17(a) and 17(b
)
. However, this method turned out to be of little use to me because the results obtained were too dependent on the effects of the individual propeller blades on the flow and the distance of the cross-sections from the plane of the propeller.
References.
[3] Metcalfe, M.P. ‘On the modelling of a fully-relaxed propeller slipstream’ AIAA/SAE/ASME/ASEE 21st. Joint Propulsion Conference, California, July 8th-10th, 1985.
Figs. 17(a), 17(b)
CHAPTER 9
L
IKE A CIRCLE IN A SPIRAL
“Round, like a circle in a spiral,…….”
SONG – ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’
The realisation dawned that perhaps the best way to understand the processes producing the circular formations would be to study plan view photographs of several different specimens, if these could be obtained. It seemed that the obvious initial sources might be two books then recently published on the topic, one by the Delgado/Andrews duo
(‘Circular Evidence’ [4] )
and the other by Dr. Meaden
(‘The Circles Effect and its Mysteries’ [5] )
. I experienced difficulty in obtaining copies of these books, but, in September 1989, received a surprise birthday gift of ‘Circular Evidence’ from my wife. Then I had photographs in abundance to study and I encountered problems immediately. The aerial photographs did not define the lay of the crops very clearly and there were the inevitable perspective distortions in the close-up photographs. The most important clue given by this collection was that
spiralled ridging
of the flattened crops was often evidenced and I had witnessed this myself in the ‘White Crow’ formation.
Each of the formations had seemed to have been unique. How could that be if they had been produced by the same processes? By then, totally bemused, I put the problem aside and awaited new inspiration.
It came during my lunch break in the office at BAe, Woodford, on Wednesday, 17th January, 1990. During my studies of the circles I had found myself often humming the once-popular song, ‘Windmills of Your Mind’. Somehow the opening lines had seemed to relate to the images I’d been studying. I was musing on this when it occurred to me that perhaps I should try to define the spirals in the circles, mathematically. Spiralled flow in air or any fluid is produced by a combination of outward (or inward) flow and rotational flow, the relative strengths of these flows determining the kind of spirals produced. This principle is shown diagrammatically by Figs.18 & 19
Fig 18 and 19
When I returned home, I paged through ‘Circular Evidence’ again and eventually came to a photograph (Headbourne Worthy, 1986) giving good definition of the lay of the crop without undue distortion caused by perspective effects. It was not a plan view photograph but this could be corrected by use of a simple draughting technique. From this I produced a corrected true plan view with the true shape of the spirals in the flow also reproduced. It became clear from an examination of the radial and rotational flow components at evenly spaced points on each spiral that a simple mathematical relationship linked them. It was this:
a constant outward radial flow had been combined with a steadily increasing rotational flow as the distance from the centre increased.
To model a spiral with same characteristics, all I needed then was the angle swept through by a spiralled strip, between the centre and the periphery of the circle. Having measured this angle for several of the plan view spirals and taking an average value, I found I was able to reproduce exactly the spirals derived from the photograph.
My next idea was to write a PC graphics program to build in the features I had established manually. Having achieved this, I was then ready to try it out on other photographs. With the mathematical flow relationship built-in, all I would need would be the measured true sweep angles for the spirals in other circles. My need for more photographs or true plan views was answered by the receipt of measured drawings from Colin Andrews and several near plan-view photographs of small (‘grapeshot’) circles taken by Busty Taylor using his then-unique ‘camera on a pole’ technique. (Many other researchers were soon to follow Busty’s example). I had to correct most of Busty’s photographs for camera angle, but there were no appreciable perspective distortions to correct. To cut a long story short, I discovered I could reproduce the spirals very accurately in all the examples sent to me. Then I looked for a method for filling in the remaining area of each circle with spirals. The simplest way of doing this seemed to be as shown by Fig.19. As each spiral was drawn to the periphery of the defined circle, I arranged for the graphics program to start generating another spiral from the centre outwards, repeatedly, until all the circular area had been filled in. This choice of method turned out to be a remarkable piece of serendipity. As I proceeded to represent each circle modelled, I discovered something very significant.
The number of spiralled strips produced by the graphics program matched, exactly, the number of strips that could be counted in the photographs!
It looked as if I had reproduced the method by which the spiralled circles had been formed and, furthermore, the model could be arranged to run in reverse to reproduce inward flow. The direction of rotation could also be reversed, so that clockwise and anticlockwise flattening could be produced. It then seemed that a focused, slender, beam of intense energy, programmed to perform in the same manner modelled by my computer program, could have been responsible for the observed patterns.
The problem now to be resolved was identification of the kind of energy required to heat the cells at the base of the plant stems, so as to create plasticity there and, simultaneously, to push the stems down gently in the direction of movement of the source. Nothing readily came to mind, but a picture was emerging in my mind of some sort of aerial craft equipped with laser-like projectors to project focused beams onto the crops below. The motion I had modelled was that of
a rotating line-scanner,
conceivably used for rapid scanning in that manner. It seemed to be yet more evidence that we were dealing with ‘out of this world’ technology and it linked with reports of UFO activity having been seen over the affected crop fields.
Furthermore, given that kind of technology, the focused energy beam could be programmed to produce complex patterns in the crops. Even the process of interweaving the crop stems would be a relatively simple activity. I envisaged that such a scanner could be linked to a computer graphics screen and could be programmed to reproduce, in the crops, whatever images had been created on the screen.
As for that question about the mysterious energy being used, I considered its known characteristics:- heating at molecular level producing distortion of the plants’ cell structure, coupled with a gentle over-pressure flattening the stems in the direction of motion of the projected beam.
(It needs to be emphasised that the idea of cell distortion by internal heating preceded, by several years, confirmation of that process by the American Dr. Levengood of BLT Laboratories).
Clearly, the beam had to be one of very high frequency energy, with wavelengths of only a few millimetres to produce the effects within the stems and it had, also, to have the capability of producing mechanical impulses. From these I conjectured that
high frequency gravitational radiation
could be involved. That immediately ‘put the cat among the pigeons’ for most physicists, but other evidence to be described later seemed to further validate that suggestion. When I shared my suspicions (without mentioning my guess about the nature of the energy being used) with Dr. Meaden in a crop formation one day, his response was that, surely, my solution raised more questions than it answered – but, of course, he was unaware of the background UFO research work and probably would not have wanted to hear about it anyway. However, Dr. Meaden’s new book turned out to be quite a ‘god-send’ later on, in that it helped to resolve the problematical ‘favoured path from space’ puzzle.
References
[4] Delgado, P. Andrews, C. Circular Evidence’ (book)
Andrews, C. Bloomsbury Publishing, Ltd., London. 1989.
[5] Meaden, T.G. ‘The Circles Effect and its Mysteries’ (book) 1989
Artetech Publishing Company, Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts.
During 1990, a few circular formations appeared in our home county of Cheshire and, generally, they appeared to be genuine ones. In June, I was asked by Colin Andrews to investigate a large ring formation in a field at Lower Peover, very close to the owner’s farmhouse. This site was also only about 3 miles from the
Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope
. On site I met with the late Mrs. Jill Burton (later Hill) who had reported the ring and, as an amateur archaeologist, she was intending to carry out a survey of the site with some of her colleagues. When I arrived on site the ring was new and only Mr. Arthur Leech, the farmer, Mrs Burton and one other person had been in the field to inspect it. It didn’t take long for me to recognise a genuine undamaged formation in green wheat. It measured some 22 metres (72 ft.) in diameter and was placed in a very sloping and uneven corner of the field. Whilst walking round the ring with the farmer, Marion (my wife) made a significant observation. There amidst the flattened wheat stalks she noticed two plants from the previous year’s crop, laid down in the same way. They were two weedy
potato plants
. They were bent gently, without damage, at the base of the stems, and small leaves projecting from the stems had been completely unharmed by the process. These
gentle bends at the base of plants in genuine formations I began to call ‘walking-stick handle’ bends
.