Have just received the news from Nancy Talbott that the long-awaited XRD study
focusing on the seven-circle barley formation at Edmonton, Alberta in 1999 is
now available on the BLT web site:
http://www.bltresearch.com/xrd.html
At this end, a special thank you to CCCRN Alberta and Crop Circle Quest
researchers Judy and Mike Arndt in Edmonton, Alberta who did excellent
sampling and other field work of this formation for BLT.
Nancy's report follows:
After constant delays (mostly due to financial constraints) the X-ray
diffraction study of clay minerals in crop circle soils, which was begun in
1999 and completed in late 2001, is now available on the BLT Research Team
Inc.'s web-site at:
http://www.bltresearch.com/xrd.html. BLT is most grateful to Mr. and Mrs.
Lyman D. Rogers of Newtown, Connecticut, whose financial support made this
possible, and to web-site personnel Kim McDonald Gazecki, William Bombardier,
and Abby Lewis who did the actual work of transferring the study to the web.
This study, funded by Laurance Rockefeller, examined specific clay minerals
(those which are called "expandable" clays and which are most sensitive to
heat) in crop circle soils, in an attempt to gather further data which might
inform us regarding the hypothesized presence of microwave radiation at crop
circle sites. Multiple scientists were involved (see "Study Personnel"), most
of whom were totally unacquainted with the crop circle phenomenon at the time
they carried out their individual work on the project. These scientists were
carefully chosen, not only for their specific expertise, but because they were
unaware of the phenomenon, thus ruling out any potential assertions by
skeptics of "experimenter bias."
The results are startling. Specific clay minerals (illite/smectites) are shown
to exhibit a subtle, but statistically significant, increase in degree of
crystallization....a change heretofore seen only in sedimentary rock, which
has been exposed to the massive pressure (called "geologic" pressure) of tons
of overlying rock and to heat from the earth's core over hundreds, or
thousands of years. To our knowledge this increase in degree of
crystallization has never been reported previously in surface soils (as is the
case here).
If "geologic" pressure had been present, obviously the plants would have been
obliterated. And, of course, they were not. Further, if the intense heat
required (a minimum of 6-800 degrees C, over a period of many hours) to
produce the crystalline change (in the absence of such geologic pressure) had
been present, the plants would have been incinerated. And, again, they were
not. The plants did show the well-documented changes (elongated apical nodes,
presence of expulsion cavities) regularly found in crop circles which are not
created by mechanical flattening (i.e., with planks and boards). What is MOST
interesting is the fact that both the documented plant changes and the
increases in clay-mineral crystallization occurred at the SAME sampling
locations. A regression analysis found that the node-length increases in the
plants were correlated with the increase in crystallization of the clay
minerals in the soils at the 99.2% level of confidence, a truly extraordinary
result.
So the data appear to indicate that whatever caused the plant changes, also
caused the soil changes at the same sampling locations. And yet we realize
that the intense energy situation required to produce the soil effects would
have destroyed the plants altogether. As Dr. Reynolds, the Dartmouth
mineralogist and recognized authority on clay minerals and the XRD technique
whom we asked to review our study stated, we are apparently dealing with an
energy currently unknown to science.
As is often the case in science, new and intriguing questions have been
raised. The notion of mechanical flattening, however, is without question
ruled out.
We hope that all interested members of the crop circle community will take the
time to examine the new study. All of the data and personnel involved have
been included on the web-site. BLT welcomes comments and/or questions. Please
note, also, that many other changes and additions have been made to other
pages on the site, including the following pages: "Home," "Plant
Abnormalities," "Clay-Mineral XRD Study," "Other Facts," "Professional
Consultants," "Lab Reports," and "Contact."
Nancy Talbott
BLT Research Team Inc.
(http://www.bltresearch.com)
UFO*BC