Early in the history of English crop circles, a French lab listed three critical issues:

(1) does the phenomenon change over time and if so, in what way?

(2) what exactly happens to the plants when they are flattened?

(3) is there something special about the sites?

This led to a formal program of field collection (investigators with precise instructions sent to gather samples) and the results were presented at various conferences, notably at a meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration in Denver (photo below) and the following year at Stanford University (on August 8, 1990) where I introduced a presentation by Jean-Jacques? Velasco, a researcher with CNES. The data he offered was as conveniently ignored as it was straightforward:

(1) the phenomenon began with single circles that English and U.S. weather scientists first tried to explain as atmospheric vortices. Soon there were multiple circles in various geometric combinations, and in following years the designs became increasingly complex, leading to the idea that we were witnessing a classic, step-by-step program of technology development--not an atmospheric anomaly but not some sort of paranormal effect either.

(2) Given that SOME of the patterns were obviously man-made hoaxes, it was possible to compare the effect on the plants in genuine versus bogus patterns. Under the microscope the results were clear: if you push a board across a wheat field to flatten it, you will break the stalks between nodes because the nodes are thicker and stronger. But in the unexplained, complex patterns the nodes themselves were exploded, often keeping the fibers intact. Conclusion: something was coupling energy into the plants in the form of heat (as one of the respondents to my first post actually stated). Therefore the idea of a beam weapon is indeed one of the scenarios to consider.

(3) The crop circles are close to ancient megalithic sites, which excites the curiosity of New Age tourists from America, but they are even closer to the most highly classified military electronics labs in Britain. In fact the roads to some of the fields run between two high fences behind which defense companies are doing research, and Army helicopters routinely patrol the area.

Answering these three basic questions does not tell us what the beam consists of, or why it is being developed. It does support the notion that the crop circles are a technological development designed to calibrate a novel type of focused energy weapon, since the resolution can be elegantly measured on the ground within the thickness of a single stalk of wheat. While the tests could presumably be conducted in remote areas, there must be some distance constraint that dictates that initial experiments have to be close to the emitting labs.