英國威爾特郡自古以來就是“麥田怪圈”的高發地,每年從4月至9月,頻繁出現的神秘怪圈能為當地帶來數百萬英鎊的旅遊收入。2009年6月2日,壹個長約183米的巨型水母狀怪圈在英國牛津郡的壹處麥田裏被發現。數量曾壹度呈減少趨勢的“麥田怪圈”再次變得引人註目起來。
現在,全世界每年大約會出現250個“麥田怪圈”,其圖案也已不再局限於嚴格意義上的圓圈。蜜蜂、長方形等復雜圖案都曾出現過,甚至還有三維立體圖形。不過,令人遺憾的是,對於“麥田怪圈”的成因,科學界至今仍存在爭議。
Adrian Potts, 2)landlord of the Barge Inn in 3)Wiltshire, was pretty cheerful recently. The pub is the center of the British crop circle industry and each year, starting in early May and 4)running for about four months, circle fans (and circle-makers) turn up from round the world. The backroom of the pub has circles on the ceiling, news of the latest formations is posted, and the chat 5)revolves around the images that have been appearing for more than 20 years in the fields of southern England.
The 2009 season began in April with an unprecedented six formations. The first was a series of simple circles in a field of 6)rape; then came a 350ft yin-yang symbol in a 7)barley field near 8)Devizes. Three ambitious formations were reported over the last 9)bank holiday and on June 2nd a giant 600ft 10)jellyfish was found in a barley field in 11)Oxfordshire.
As of yesterday(June 4th), there have been more than 20 major formations spotted. Potts, who could claim to be something of an expert on the subject, has a 12)hunch that this will be a good summer for circles: “The crops are not true enough yet. Weather permitting, I’d say the best ones will start now. In the next two weeks there should be a burst of activity.”
Francine Blake, who founded the Wiltshire crop circle study group in 1995, shares Potts’s optimism. She and other 13)self-appointed investigators identify, measure, photograph, and report on all formations. They go circle-spotting at night in 14)likely places, send crop 15)stalks for chemical analysis in university laboratories (yes, really), and have more than 6,000 crop circles on their database.
She was excited by the jellyfish: “It’s fantastic. When we look at it, it’s got seven small circles, or moon shapes. It’s describing the 16)magnetic field of Earth,” she says. She too is optimistic about the summer ahead: “This year started much earlier. There’s one every day now. It is very intense already. I have never seen such complex designs in rape in all my years of studying this subject. Usually, the season starts with a nice little pattern, a tri-petal flower or such like, one or maybe two in rape if we are lucky. But this year they are big, complex and numerous right from the start.”
“What does this mean?” Blake asks on her blog. “It means that we have to take note that something extraordinary is happening. Crop circles are not normal occurrences; they do not fit in too well with our usual beliefs. This of course is not 17)to everyone’s liking―it is not easy to face the unknown.”
From this you may gather that Blake 18)eschews more 19)prosaic explanations for the circles. In fact the professional circle world divides neatly. One 20)hemisphere is occupied by21)questors, 22)spiritualists and 23)paranormalists, such as Blake; the other by makers, tricksters and artists.
本文為全文原貌 未安裝PDF瀏覽器用戶請先下載安裝 原版全文 The first group can tell from 24)post-holes, foot tracks, and other clear signs that the majority are made by humans. But they argue that many crop circles―perhaps 20%―defy rational explanation. Their research suggests that “true circles” are created in a very few minutes by a blast of energy. According to some, the crop cells become swollen and are bent down at the 25)nodes. Others say the26)cellular structure of the plants is affected and that the composition of the soil is altered. A few circles, they say, display a27)phenomenal level of complexity and would be difficult to draw on paper, let alone in a field after dark. When they cannot explain what they see, they turn to UFOs, aliens, symbols, 28)alchemy, ancient wisdom, sacred geometry, whirlwinds, and other unknown “29)entities” to explain what they say are messages from 30)extraterrestrials or signs and 31)portents of the times.
The second group is made up of artists and 32)pranksters. What began in the late 1970s with two Wiltshire watercolor artists, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, going into the fields for a 33)laugh to create simple circles to tease those who believe in UFOs, was 34)picked up by London-based artists and sculptors in the mid-1990s.One group, now calling themselves the Circlemakers, includes 35)situationist artists Rod Dickinson, the sculptor Gavin Turk, Rob Irving and others. They say on their website that they 36)latched on to the circle believers, created images from reading the same books that the believers read, and that they now team up with other teams of circle-makers to create ambitious formations. Together they say they have made crop circles an essential part of our popular culture, part of the myth of the English countryside.
For a long time the Circlemakers kept their identities secret but they now openly claim to have made many hundreds of circles. However, they play the game that there is some 37)inexplicable force out there by not claiming to have made them all, and never revealing which particular ones they created.
最近,英格蘭威爾特郡“駁船”酒館的老板艾德裏安?波茨特別高興。這家酒吧是英國“麥田怪圈”界的聚集中心。每年,從5月初開始,在持續約四個月的時間裏,來自世界各地的“麥田怪圈”迷們(以及怪圈制造者們)會聚集於此。酒館內後屋的天花板上有怪圈圖案,墻上貼著關於最新發現的怪圈的消息,人們談論著20多年前便已開始在英格蘭南部麥田裏出現的怪圈圖案。
2009年“麥田怪圈季”從4月開始,且前所未有地出現了6個怪圈。第壹個怪圈是在壹片油菜田裏,由壹系列簡單的圓圈組成;接著是在迪威齊斯鎮附近的大麥田裏出現了壹個長達350英尺(約107米)的陰陽標誌怪圈。然後是在上個銀行公休假日發現的3個制作過程艱巨的怪圈。而6月2日,壹個長達600英尺(約183米)的巨型水母狀怪圈在牛津郡壹處大麥田裏被發現。
截至昨日(6月4日),英格蘭已經出現了20多個巨大的怪圈。堪稱怪圈專家的波茨稱,他有壹種預感,今年夏天將會出現大量怪圈。“那些麥田還沒真正長到時候。如果天氣良好,我敢說今年的最佳怪圈即將出現。接下來的兩個星期裏,怪圈數量應該會猛增。”
弗朗辛?布萊克,1995年創立了威爾特郡“麥田怪圈”現象研究小組。她和波茨壹樣樂觀。她與其他自封的研究人員們對所有的怪圈都進行了鑒定、測量、拍照和記錄。夜間,他們專門前往怪圈可能出現的地方,采集麥稈並將其送往各大學的實驗室進行化學分析(是的,真的)。他們的數據庫裏已經有6000多個怪圈的記錄。
對於那個水母狀的怪圈,布萊克興奮不已。“這太神奇了!當我們查看它時,可以發現七個小圓圈,或者說是圓月圖案。它所展現的正是地球的磁場。”她說。對於接下來的夏季會出現大量怪圈這壹預測,她也十分樂觀。“今年的怪圈出現得要早壹些。現在,每天都會有壹個怪圈出現。這已經很高頻率了。在我研究‘麥田怪圈’的這麽多年裏,我從來沒見過油菜地裏有如此復雜的圖案。通常,怪圈季是以壹個漂亮的小圖案開場,比如三瓣花之類的。運氣好的話,油菜田裏會出現壹兩個怪圈。但今年剛壹開始,就出現了這麽多又大又復雜的怪圈!”
“這意味著什麽呢?”布萊克在她的博客裏寫道,“這意味著我們必須註意到壹些特別的事情正在發生。‘麥田怪圈’的出現並不尋常,它的出現給我們通常的觀念帶來了沖擊。當然,並不是所有人都喜歡這樣――面對未知事物絕非易事。”
本文為全文原貌 未安裝PDF瀏覽器用戶請先下載安裝 原版全文 從這些話裏妳或許能發現,布萊克不願從乏味的凡俗角度來解釋這些怪圈。實際上,“麥田怪圈”界可截然分為兩派:壹類是探秘者、唯心論者和靈異現象研究者,例如布萊克;另壹類則是怪圈制造者、惡作劇玩家和藝術家們。
第壹類人憑著田裏的坑洞、腳印足跡和其他明顯痕跡就能判斷大部分怪圈都是人為的。但是他們認為,許多“麥田怪圈”――大約20%――無法得到理性的解釋。他們的研究表明,那些“真正的怪圈”是某股能量在短短幾分鐘之內創造出來的。有壹些人說,麥子的細胞膨脹變大,麥稈在節點處向下彎曲。另壹些人說作物的細胞結構也受到了影響,同時土壤成份也改變了。他們說,有些怪圈所呈現的圖案復雜得出奇,畫在紙上都困難,更不用說黑暗中在田地裏人為制作。當他們無法解釋自己所看到的怪圈時,他們便轉向用不明飛行物、外星人、符號、魔力、古代智慧、神秘幾何學、旋風等其他未知“實體” 去闡釋,說它們是“來自地球之外的預言”或者“時代的標記和征兆”。
第二類人是壹些藝術家和惡作劇玩家。最開始是在20世紀70年代,威爾特郡的兩個水彩畫家道?鮑爾和戴夫?喬利跑到麥田裏去制作了幾個簡單的圓形怪圈,只為找點樂子並嘲弄那些相信不明飛行物的人。隨後,在20世紀90年代中期,許多倫敦的藝術家和雕刻家常常效仿這壹做法。壹個包括情境畫家羅 德?狄金森、雕刻家加文?特克,羅布?歐文等人在內的團體自稱為“怪圈制造者”。他們在他們的網站上說,他們擁有大批怪圈信徒,根據這些信徒所讀的書籍他們創造了許多圖案。現在他們與其他怪圈制造者合作,打算壹同創造眾多制作過程艱巨的“怪圈”。同時他們還認為,他們已經使“麥田怪圈”現象成為了流行文化的壹個重要部分,也成了英國鄉村的壹大神話。
很長壹段時間裏,怪圈制造者們從不暴露自己的身份。但是現在,他們公開宣稱制造了成百上千個怪圈。盡管如此,他們也故弄玄虛――並沒有聲稱所有的怪圈都是由他們制造的,也從不透露他們創造了哪些特別的怪圈――從而讓人們覺得的確存在某種無法解釋的力量。
How to Make a Crop Circle
1. Prepare a detailed drawing. Keep it simple. Circles and triangles are relatively easy to make. Advanced curves, spirals, straight lines, fractals(不規則碎片形) and pictures can take a long time to mark out(規劃) and work.
2. You will need helpers; decide who will do what and in what order the image needs to be constructed.
3. You will need a marked rope or a 100ft measuring tape(卷尺) to mark out the site, and a foot-wide wooden board about 4ft long to do the flattening(整平). The board should have ropes attached to each end so you can loop it over your neck.
4. Ask permission from a farmer and be prepared to pay compensation. A crop circle can cause hundreds of pounds of damage.
5. Wait for a moonlit night when it is dry. Enter the field by the tramlines(條痕,縱痕), or marks left by tractors.
6. Mark out the field carefully. Some circle makers use sticks or poles but these can leave tell-tale(泄露內情的) holes of human intervention.
7. Put the rope round your neck, with the board on the ground in front of you; press down with your right foot, move it forward, press it down again, and so on.
8. Leave the field the same way you entered.
9. Hide your tracks.
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