Mysterious African ‘Fairy Circles’

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In the sandy desert grasslands of Namibia in southern Africa, mysterious bare spots known as “fairy circles” will form and then disappear years later for no reason anyone can determine. A new look at these strange patterns doesn’t solve the wistful mystery but at least reveals that the largest of the circles can linger for a lifetime.

When it rains substantially, a thick carpet of grass covers the sand. But this green down is punctuated by bare red soil circular patches, which appear as though drawn by a compass. And there’s not just one or two of them but thousands. These mysterious sand circles appear at around 60 to 120 kilometres inland from the coast from South Africa to Angola, at an altitude of between 500 and 1000 metres. To humans, they make no sense at all. To animals, they’re a source of succulent grass in an arid no man’s land between savannah and sand dunes.

Small fairy circles stick around an average of 24 years, while larger ones can exist as long as 75 years, according to research detailed today (June 27) in the journal PLoS ONE.

Walter Tschinkel may not have solved the mystery of the fairy circles, but he can tell you that they’re alive. Tens of thousands of the formations—bare patches of soil, 2 to 12 meters in diameter—freckle grasslands from southern Angola to northern South Africa, their perimeters often marked by a tall fringe of grass. Locals say they’re the footprints of the gods. Scientists have thrown their hands up in the air. But now Tschinkel, a biologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, has discovered something no one else has.
Tschinkel grew interested in fairy circles during a 2005 safari to NamibRand Nature Reserve in southwest Namibia, in the Namib Desert. It was his first experience with the round clearings, tens of thousands of which expose the red sandy soil in the area. A short time after the circles form, a tall ring of grass grows around the border, highlighting the bare area.
By comparing satellite images from 2004 and 2008, Tschinkel found that circles are quite stable, popping up at nearly their full size, or at least growing quickly once they get started. Here, the circles are shown dotting the landscape of Jagkop, Namibia, after a rain.

Few researchers have studied fairy circles, in part because of their remoteness, 111 miles (180 km) from the nearest village, and their work is usually based on opportunistic experiments done on quick trips, Tschinkel says. “There’s no program really focused on trying to figure this out.”

Over the past 10 years, the park has sold fairy circles to ecotourists for about $50 each. The buyers don’t actually get the land; they just adopt it—kind of like people who “purchase” stars. Each circle the reserve sells is marked with the date of sale, and new owners are given the latitude and longitude so they can check up on their purchase on Google Earth.

Did these shallow craters come from space? Are they the work of termites or are they caused by particular mineral compounds in the ground? They’re here in their hundreds of thousands and they’re called “Fairy Circles” — for want of a better name. And all we know is Namibia’s Fairy Circles are neither a fraud nor a joke, but they’re one of Africa’s most mysterious natural wonders.

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A crop circle before the earthquake and the eclipse of the sun in Italy

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Last month, before the solar eclipse, there was a mysterious crop circle in the small town Bracciano, Bertinoro in Italy, reports, “Discovery News.”

Earthquake, which occurred about 30 km from Bologna on 20th May, woke up a woman who has noticed circular spiral in the corn field. The circle has attracted the attention of self-styled experts on this phenomenon.

Some of them believe that this round of the spiral patterns is not accidental appeared just in time for the eclipse, and symbolically represents the process of the eclipse and the Sun and Earth. However, recent solar eclipse could be seen in Italy or elsewhere in Europe.

Mysterious circles from time to time appear in the meadows, fields of wheat, corn, oat fields around the world, and most of them are in England.

Many of them are made with such precision and detail, and many believe that this is not a human work, but “visitors from outer space.”

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UFO Making Crop Circle Footage near Oliver’s Castle, Wiltshire, UK

On 11 August 1996, a student John Wabey recorded a short video that he claimed to have shot that morning during camping in south England at Oliver’s Castle, a fort in Wiltshire. It showed a ‘snowflake’ design forming while balls of light circled overhead. Four swiftly moving light balls are clearly visible, circling above the formating crop circle.

 This clip has been taken from a detailed anaylsis of the footage. There are many features of this video which point towards its authenticity. The 1st is the fact that the camera is handheld, the luminations path are easily plottable relative to background. 2nd on a frame by frame analysis we can see that the balls are in fact constantly changing shape. 3rd, the 2nd set of lights comes into the shot from behind the tree next to the hedges, and this detail would not be picked up by regular televisions. 4th is the formation itself, which was not there on the night of the 10th when John Wabey was asking if anyone wanted to join him on his UFO hunt on the hill at the Barge Inn Pub.

Most professional videolaboratories, where the tape was examined, certify that the film is “clean” and that it is unlikely that the video was edited with computer. Computer animators in 2006 couldn’t make anything that even closely resembles the authentic look of this footage, shot 10 years previously, when Windows 95 was the most exciting piece of software on the planet. It is time that the skeptical community put aside their disbelief that this phenomenon is genuinely mysterious.

The footage provoked bitter controversy among crop-circle researchers. One group insists that the crop design is man-made and the video a fake, and claims to have obtained a confession from the person who made it, while others still think that both are genuine.

There is enough evidence to show that it is impossible for humans to mimic the complexity, beauty, accuracy, geometry, scale and physical changes to the plants and soil. Who or what are these balls of light? Are they native to Earth and we simply don’t see them? How can they appear to move at 100 feet a second in mid air? How can they focus microwaves so accurately to create spirals of this and greater complexity? And the big one… WHY? Why do they send us these cryptic geometric puzzles? And what can we as a species learn from them?

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Chichen Itza Pyramid Beam

When Hector Siliezar visited the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza with his wife and kids in 2009, he snapped three iPhone photos of El Castillo, a pyramid that once served as a sacred temple to the Mayan god Kukulkan. A thunderstorm was brewing near the temple, and Siliezar was trying to capture lightning crackling dramatically over the ruins.

He took 3 pics, with an interval of 15 sec. ( what it takes to save in his camera)
He sees a light and thought it was a lighting and check immediately to see if he really catch it. To his surprise the light he catch was not part of the Thunderstorm… it was a beam of light coming out of the top of the Pyramid dedicated to the Feathered Serpent God.
He was so exited that he show the pic to all the people around including a some Maya priest who ask him to keep the pic hide of the public. But another tourist there was a famous TV star and he convince them to show it to Jaime Maussan.

A containing was posted originally in the Italian website Segni dal Cielo, “Signs from Heaven”, managed by Massimo Fratini, supposedly the same guy that took the pictures in front of Kukulkan pyramid. Or by someone from Italy, close to Fratini. This assumption is based in the screenshot of the computer’s directory where the pics were stored. The answer is in his own website.
It seems the original images were sold to Mexican investigator Jaime Maussan, that immediately sold them to some Mexican TV channel and the matter you can watch right now:

Needless to say the name “Jaime Maussan” was ever accompanied by the word “HOAX” in the other threads about this event, but without a solid investigation.

The photo has surfaced on several Mayan doomsday discussion forums. But was the light beam a sign from the gods — a warning about Dec. 21, 2012, the date that marks the end of the Mayan calendar cycle, and when some people fear the world will end? Or is it simply the result of an iPhone glitch? 

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Human lightning rod – Roy C. Sullivan

When it comes to being a human lightning rod Roy C. Sullivan is the iron clad holder of the title.

Roy C. Sullivan was a U.S. forest ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and it seemed that having an electric personality prerequisite for his job.

Lightning strike #1 came in 1942 happened as he was working up in a lookout tower and the lighting bolt shot through his leg and knocked his big toenail off.

Lightning strike #2 came in 1969 while he was driving along a mountain road a second strike burned off his eyebrows and knocked him unconscious.

Lightning strike #3 came in 1970 while he was walking across his yard to get the mail, left his shoulder seared.

Lightning strike #4 came in 1972 when lightning set his hair on fire and Roy had to throw a bucket of water over his head to cool off.

Lightning strike #5 came on August 7, 1973 while he was in his car, just one Year after his hair had grown back, a lightning bolt ripped through his hat and hit him on the head, setting his hair on fire again. It threw him out of his truck, knocked his left shoe off and seared his legs.

Lightning strike #6 came on June 5, 1976 while he was checking on a campsite, injuring his ankle.

Lightning strike #7 came on June 25, 1977 while he was fishing. It sent him to hospital with chest and stomach burns.

Roy Sullivan was never killed by lighting – he committed suicide while in his 70’s in 1983 reportedly distraught over the loss of a woman.

source

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