Been on holiday. Back to the 80% man-made: That particular figure is the estimate of Colin Andrews, one GB "specialist". The estimate, however, could be 1% or whatever. The fact is that a number of very complex formations are provably manmade. These people document and publish their work, sometimes they get payed to do formations for advertizing. They even have a website:
http://www.circlemakers.org/. Another fact is that the so-called experts are not consistently able to distinguish between documentedly manmade formations and those that the same experts deem "genuine".
Why is this so important? Because it proves conclusively that crop patterns CAN be made by humans. This means that all those "technique baffles scientists" statements simply dont hold water. It may baffle some scientists, but it can be done by humans.
Some people keep talking about "pranks with planks", some even talk about drunks; this is in order to make it sound impossible. Today's crop formation makers are serious (maybe crazy, but, serious) people, no doubt using lasers, GPS devices and other modern equipment. They design and plan their art carefully on computers before they set out into the dark fields, possibly they even rehearse the operation.
About those burst nodes: Have you actually walked to a field and bent a few stalks? Thats how stalks react when you bend them. Probably evolution made those staks cabable of surving being flattened ... dont forget that this happens all the time, naturally, during heavy rain and wind.
The plasma vortex: One serious problem with the plasma vortex is that it is a speculative phenomenon invented to explain crop circles. It has never been observed and no traces of it have ever been observed, exept crop circles. So its explaining one unknown with another ... and thats not science.
Top down deduction (Occam's razor if you will) says:
1) Crop patterns can be made by human beings.
2) We have no proof of the existence of aliens and even if they were here we, lack any motive for them to make crop circles.
3) There is no known natural phenomenon that can explain the complex and diverse geometric patterns we see.
Since humans are a known source of crop patterns and the only known source, it is reasonable to conclude that all crop patterns are made by humans. The fact that some scientists think otherwise and publish articles is interesting, but it doesnt make it a truth. But lets see what reviews those articles get.
Hans
