Contrary to popular perception, crop circles are not a modern phenomenon. They are mentioned in academic texts of the late 17th Century, and over 200 cases have been reported prior to 1970. Some eighty eyewitnesses – as far flung as British Columbia and Australia – have reported crop circles forming in under twenty seconds; these witnesses describe sightings of incandescent or brightly-coloured balls of light which either precede a crop circle or are actively involved in its creation; in some cases shafts of light have descended onto a field and swirled the crop into a geometricshape in less than fifteen seconds. Such reports are often described by farmers.

 

In genuine formations the stems are not broken but bent (right), normally about an inch off the ground and near the plant's first node. In special cases, the stems are bent six inches from the top of the seed head. Such features defeat the hoax argument, since a plank or garden roller is required to flatten the crop to the ground, resulting in clear damage to the plants.

 

 The plants appear to be subjected to a short and intense burst of heat which softens the stems to drop just above the ground at 90º, where they reharden into their new and very permanent position without damage. Plant biologists are baffled by this feature, and it is the singlemost method of identifying the real phenomenon. Research and laboratory tests suggest that infrasound (sound below 20 Hz) is capable of producing such an effect: High-pressure infrasound is capable of boiling water inside the stems in one nanosecond, expanding the water, and leaving tiny blowholes in the plants' nodes. The pressure applied also causes the water to steam, and it is reported by farmers that when they stumble upon a new crop circle they see steam rising from within the design. This process creates surface charring along the stems.

The tremendous application of local heat is also responsible for altering the local water table, as millions of gallons of surface and sub-surface water is evaporated. With the heat and electro-magnetic frequencies applied, it has been scientifically documented that soil samples taken from within crop circles show changes to its crystalline structure and mineral composition. Expert analysis concludes that such a process requires temperatures of 1500º C and sub-soil pressure typically found in strata thousands of years old. Evidence even exists of four non-naturally occuring, short-life radioactive isotopes in the soil inside genuine crop circles (these dissipate after three or four hours, causing no adverse side effects); in fact, the soil in and around them appears to have been baked. Hardly the kind of anomalies created by pranksters with planks!

Crop circles also show existence of ultrasound –sound above the human hearing range – and such frequencies are known to exist at ancient sites such as stone circles, long barrows, tumuli, dolmens and menhirs. And like all sacred sites, temples and places of worship – such as Gothic cathedrals – the crop circles appear at the intersecting points of the Earth's magnetic pathways of energy; thus the size and shape of a crop circle is typically determined by the area of these 'node' points at the time of their appearance.