UM - CANADIAN CROP CIRCLES

SYNOPSIS: Intricate formations known as crop circles often pop up overnight in the middle of nowhere. Many are attributed to clever pranksters - but others have no rational explanation at all. Are they the work of some strange force on earth? Or, something not of this world?

Canadian residents Rusty Manuel and Thelley Whitman were driving home one day from Edmonton, Alberta when they were flagged down by one of their farmhands. What Rusty and Thelley discovered were seven crop circles pressed into thistle and barley - comprising a formation about 190-feet long. Soon after the startling discovery was made, the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network was contacted. CCCRN is a group of volunteers dedicated to gathering information about the mystery of crop circles. Skeptics were quick to call the whole affair a hoax - attributing the work to clever pranksters. Paul Anderson - Director of the CCCRN - has studied many similar formations in western Canada. Paul believes another factor makes it improbable the so-called Edmonton circle was a hoax. Unlike England's mysterious Stonehenge region - where many crop circles have been sighted - western Canada holds little of that same mystique.
When the crop and soil samples were analyzed both internal and external characteristics of the crops were profoundly altered in ways that could not be induced by humans using ropes and boards. Meanwhile, the soil samples from the Edmonton site were sent to Dr. Sampath Iyengar in California, an expert in materials analysis. The results showed a dramatic difference between soil samples taken from inside the crop circle compared to those taken from outside the circle. Did the crop circles in western Canada finally provide conclusive evidence of unknown forces at work? Skeptics say no. They blame pranksters who proudly admit to making 80 percent of these often-complex formations - creations they call 'human land art.' But what about the other 20 percent? It's a debate that's been raging since the mid-1970s when a wave of crop circles captured worldwide attention. However, the most compelling question remains unanswered. If they are not the work of humans, then who - or what - created them? And how? Theories range from geothermal and magnetic forces to some kind of cosmic energy. Perhaps most intriguing of all the proposed theories is the one that claims at least some crop circles are the work of extra-terrestrials. Over the past three decades, researchers have compiled a database that includes more than ten thousand crop circle reports from around the world. If eight thousand of these strange formations can be attributed to pranksters, that still leaves more than two thousand that are simply...unexplained