Did extraterrestrials answer Arecibo message to the heavens?

The Crabwood crop formation which appeared near Winchester in Hampshire in August 2002 is perhaps the most mysterious feature that has surfaced in recent times but it is just one of a plethora of complex geometric patterns that magically surface in crop fields around the globe annually… some more perplexing than others.

In the summer of 2009 a depiction of a giant jellyfish suddenly appeared in a field close to an ancient burial chamber near Ashbury in Oxfordshire that, according to enthusiasts, appeared to replicate the Earth’s magnetic field.

The 600-foot by 250-foot pattern emerged in a barley field at Wayland’s Smithy a few miles from the iconic Uffington chalk White Horse landmark and close to a burial site near the ancient Ridgeway trail.

Wiltshire Crop Circle Study Group founder Francine Blake described the design as exhibiting “a criss-cross style throughout and a very fine design” with seven small circles, or moon shapes, and suggested it depicted the “magnetic field of the Earth”.

But unlike many of the most recent examples of the phenomenon, the Ashbury jellyfish featured a rather simplistic pattern of crescents and circles, which conceivably could have been created using simple tools to trample the design into the barley.

A far more technologically-advanced method of creating formations seems to involve subjecting the plant nodes to high levels of microwave energy, which creates a blast effect that causes water inside them to vaporise and burst out, resulting in the stalks bending over to produce extremely complex patterns.

How the Ashbury jellyfish got there remains unclear but, despite it’s simplistic appearance, witnesses suggest it was an example of the more complex formations that clearly require sophisticated technology to create, incorporating some form of microwave radiation, GPS and lasers.

But why groups, or individuals, would go to such lengths and expense to create pretty patterns in fields that often result in hefty financial losses for farm owners remains a huge mystery... with the only other explanation being that the designs are a product of more otherwordly origins.

Support for this theory comes from two formations that appeared in the same field not far from the Chilbolton radio telescope in Hampshire in August 2001, one representing a “face” and the other appearing to depict an answer to the Arecibo transmission sent by SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) by radio telescope back in 1974.

The SETI transmission originated from the Arecibo radio telescope on the northern coast of Puerto Rico and contained an encoded message to the heavens, aimed towards the M13 star cluster about 25,000 light years away and consisting of around 300,000 stars in the Hercules constellation.

Transmitted on 16 November 1974, the message consisted of 1,679 pulses of binary code, which took a little under three minutes to transmit at a frequency of 2,380MHz.

The reason for there being 1,679 pulses was down to mathematics, with the number representing the unique product of two prime numbers, 23 and 73, multiplied together.

The theory behind this was that any intelligent beings would probably look for unique universal constructs, such as prime numbers, chemical element frequencies and binary digits, within the message. And since only the two prime numbers 23 and 73, when multiplied together, produce 1,679 there can only be a single way to arrange the signal when it is converted into a matrix grid of 23 by 73 squares.

The original message was comprised of several sections, each depicting a particular aspect of human civilisation. At the top were binary representations of the numbers one through 10, showing the numbers eight, nine and 10 as two columns to allow anyone decoding the message to understand numbers too large to be written on a single line could be “carried over”.

The next section contained the binary values one, six, seven, eight and 15 which indicated the atomic numbers of the primary elements for life on Earth… hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus respectively.

A larger section of three rows represented the formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA, with a graphical representation of our DNA double helix either side of a vertical bar that indicated the number of nucleotides in DNA.

Directly below the DNA double helix was a small representation of humans, depicted as a body, two arms and two legs (resembling a stick man). To the left was a binary value of the population of the Earth back in 1974 and to the right binary code for the height of humans.

The next section was a simplified representation of our solar system, highlighting the significance of the third planet from the sun… our home, the Earth.

The last section depicted the origin of the message itself, the Arecibo radio telescope, and the diameter of the radio dish.

According to British computer consultant and crop-circle enthusiast Paul Vigay, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances on a Portsmouth beach in 2009, the crop formation at Chilbolton responding to the Arecibo message appeared to highlight nine major discrepancies when compared to the original SETI transmission.

While the numbers one to 10 were exactly the same in the formation, the atomic numbers indicating the prevalent elements for life on Earth were different… an additional element with an atomic number 14, silicon, appearing in the response.

Another discrepancy indicated an extra strand on the left side of the DNA double helix, with a less obvious change incorporated in the binary coding of the number of nucleotides in DNA itself.

There were also changes to the shape of the humanoid, which was depicted as almost “alien-like”, and to the diagram of the Arecibo dish. And, either side of the ET in the formation, were changes to both the population figure and the height value, which was roughly 3'4" and correlates with alleged “alien abduction” accounts by “greys”.

In the solar system section there were also changes, with the fourth and fifth planets from the sun highlighted as well as the third. Could this be referencing Mars and Jupiter for some reason?

The final alterations focused on the representations of the Arecibo transmitter in the original message, with the response seemingly containing a diagrammatic version of a formation that had appeared in the same field a year earlier, in 2000. The binary code for the size of the transmitter had also been altered.

The actual implications of these changes are difficult to decipher and could refer to the Earth or perhaps the home planet or planets of those extraterrestrials thought to be responding to the Arecibo message. Perhaps silicon is fundamental to their existence and they are about 3'4" tall? Maybe they occupy three planets in their solar system or are present on the Earth, Mars and Jupiter in our own?

And what about the apparent depiction of the formation in the same field a year earlier, which researchers had identified as a possible design for a communication device or perhaps a new model of the nucleus? It’s all very mysterious and would require a huge effort to plan and produce over such a small space of time. It really seems impossible to believe that any terrestrial organisation would go to such lengths to create an elaborate hoax of this complexity.

While many groups profess to be involved in the phenomenon none have come forward to claim responsibility for these amazing designs and the equipment required remains a mystery, with a high-powered magnetron device seemingly the only way to create the energy capable of splitting the crop nodes in such a precise way.

It is widely believed that the power sources for any extraterrestrial craft that could be interacting with our planet would involve some form of electromagnetic propulsion system, suggesting a microwave radiation device could easily be a type of technology these extraterrestrials may possess.

But, until such time as one of these amazing formations is filmed being brought to life then the entire subject remains shrouded in mystery, although… from the evidence so far... there would certainly seem to be grounds for extensive research into the secrets these designs could contain.

Check out Part Three of this series for more on the mysterious crop patterns that clearly suggest otherwordly entities could be trying to communicate with humanity and guide mankind on its path to “infinity and beyond”.