To many people, crop circles are usually thought to be the work of hoaxers, and every year, more and more elaborate designs appear throughout not only the United Kingdom, but also all over the World. However, over the past month or so, there are 3 formations that begs the question: 'Could these elaborate crop formations really be created by man?'. One of the formations that recently appeared seems to show a reply from some higher intelligence, to a message that was sent out into deep space from Earth in 1974. More on that in a moment, lets first look at an amazing circle that appeared a few weeks before 'The ET Message'.

One of the most interesting circles to appear in recent years appeared during early August this year at Milk Hill, Alton Barnes, Wiltshire that has been named 'The Galaxy'. This particular circle comprised of more than 400 circles, perfectly aligned in a psychedelic swirl. The whole formation measured a mammoth 1500 feet across with the circles ranging in size from a few feet in diameter to more than 70 feet across! John Lundberg, who is a self-confessed crop circle hoaxer, said 'If this formation was man-made, allowing for time to get into and out of the field under cover of darkness, the construction time should be around four hours.'

'Given that there are 400 circles, some of which span 70ft, that would mean that one of these circles would need to be created every 30 seconds and that's not even allowing time for the surveying, purely for flattening. This formation pushes the envelope, and that's a massive understatement.'

Karen Douglas, 31, who is a crop circle expert from Gosport, Hampshire, added: 'This is very, very exciting. Even the people who usually debunk the formations think this one is incredible. It is the sheer size and complexity that sets it apart. There have been big formations before but never as many circles. People are really astounded by it.'

In 1991, two Southampton pensioners, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, confessed they had been making patterns in fields since the Seventies. But although they claimed to have hung up thier 'stompers' - the wooden planks they said they used to flatten the crops - the circles have continued to appear. The shapes have grown more complex, ranging from representations of the DNA spiral and intricate mathematical figures. As you will see from the other amazing formation that appeared in August, that is featured below, it seems that perhaps hoaxers are not responsible for all the circles that appear!
 

Although many of todays crop circles are known to be the work of pranksters, interest in crop circles has enjoyed a recent revival thanks to a pair of new patterns that appear in a field next to the Chilbolton Observatory in Hampshire, England. One is of a face, that could be interpreted as looking similar to the face of a "gray" alien (viewable on our front page). The second is a modified version of a message that was sent out into deep space in 1974  from the Arecibo satellite dish in Puerto Rico, broadcast in the direction of the globular cluster M13 in November of that year.
 

The Arecibo message, which was designed by Frank Drake (who was then Director of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and who went onto become Chairman of the Board of the SETI Institute) together with his Observatory staff, was a simple graphic consisting of 73 rows of 23 "bits" per row. This number of rows and columns was chosen because each is a prime number. Prime numbers could be easily guessed by any recipients, and that would help them to decode the graphic. The message was sent by simple shifting of the signal between two frequencies in the 2,380 MHz band. It took three minutes to send the message.

The message itself gives the kind of information that any culture would want to learn about us: where we are located (at least within our solar system), what we look like (a crude stick figure), a simple drawing of the telescope used to send the message, and something about our biological construction (DNA and some of the building blocks of our biochemistry.) This message was sent as a "demonstration" to commemorate the upgrading of the 1,000 foot diameter Arecibo telescope with a new, more accurate reflector surface.

The crop circle found in Hampshire looks very much like the one broadcast in 1974. But there are some differences: the Hampshire pattern has replaced the Arecibo Telescope with another graphic that is reminiscent of a space satellite with solar cells. The diagram that depicts our solar system has been replaced with another that still has nine worlds, but planets 3 through 5 are offset, and the last is drawn larger than the others (or perhaps this is a depiction of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter). Finally, the graphic of the human has been modified by a stick figure that, while humanoid, has a far larger head.

So, do the staff at Cosmic Conspiracies believe that this message is 'the real deal'?... Well to be honest.... NO!

Lets look at the evidence. The 1974 signal was aimed at the cluster M13, which has hundreds of thousands of stars. Why was this particular star formation chosen? Well, the reason for choosing to point the signal at such a large cluster of stars was for the simple reason that the actual diameter of the signal sent out was quite small, around 1/15th the diameter of the full moon, and therefore a cluster of stars that were highly clustered together were chosen to increase the chance of the signal being intercepted. Also lets consider that M13 is 25,000 light-years distant, which means that the message will not reach its target for another 250 centuries (unless of course the aliens managed to pick up the signal when they flew closer to Earth?) and you can start to see why we are highly sceptical that this message has come from outer space. Clearly, the crop circle can't be a response from any of M13's inhabitants; they haven't gotten the message yet. But what about a random, Milky Way star that might be in the "beam" of the Arecibo message? Couldn't they have overheard the transmission, and offered this clever carving in reply? No.... The chances that it has hit another solar system in the 27 years since its broadcast are… one in 50,000, approximately. If you make the reasonable assumption that the aliens cannot travel faster than the speed of light, then they must lie within 13-1/2 light-years to have received this message and responded. The chances of a star system within the volume of space filled by the beam out to this distance is closer to one in a half-million! In other words, it's highly, highly unlikely that any star system has yet been exposed to the Arecibo message. This is an important point, as it is quantitative and not dependent on any other assumptions about this crop circle: no other star systems could have yet received this transmission. And incidentally, the odds that a nearby probe could have intercepted it are even smaller!

Also, when viewing the pictures of the 'ET Message' up close, the workmanship seems very rough indeed and its construction does not compare to the quality of 'The Galaxy'. Did you know that nearly two-thirds of all crop circles are in England, and that Chilbolton was the location of other crop circles in 1999 and 2000. Why would aliens resort to a signaling system that conveys so little information and can only be used during the two-month growth season, and then only at night? We are also informed by Chilbolton that these recent glyphs appeared (as so many do) after a weekend.

So, we think that the 'ET Message' was probably a hoax on a major scale, perhaps made to 'cash in' on the 'Galaxy' crop circle that appeared just a few weeks before. Oh yes, and our feelings about 'The Galaxy' formation? Well... we think that perhaps this is one example that could be genuine, if there ever were such a thing!.

Article Written by Dave Cosnette 2001