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Scepticism about the claims of hoaxers

The 2001 East Field 'Solar System' Replica (uk2001co) - by Nick Kollerstom | 13th August 2001
On 3/4th August 2001 Circlemaker Matthew Williams and his 'team' made an attempt at replicating the 'Solar System' formation which was originally found at Longwood Warren in 1995 (uk95bi).

The formation was made for a forthcoming film on the crop circle subject, and key elements of the formation were destroyed after a day. However, the remaining formation has created a number of discussions as to it's accuracy and purpose. The following comment was received by mathematician Nick Kollerstom, who voices some opinions as to it's accuracy and 'quality'.

In the spirit of free speech, I have added a subsequent email I received from Matthew Williams, in reply to Nick's initial thoughts.

P.V.


What follows are Nick's words:-

We went out yesterday to see MW's new creation.

** At last, Conclusive Proof **

The Great Pretender himself, Matthew Williams, has notified us (as he said he would) of a formation made by his 'team' and it's a replica of the 1995 Solar System. Last week we received the announcement. This formation is entirely different in character from the 'real thing' in a manner that is quite unmistakeable. Why, it contaminates the East Field by its mere presence. As I discussed the original solar system mandala in my talk to the CCCS Conference last month (on Cereal Geometry) I hope I may be permitted to express this opinion.

In particular, this formation showed what the judges at the original crop-circle making conference (Rupert Sheldrake & the Guardian) concluded, that humans didn't seem able to replicate the vortex-flow effect at the centre of the flattened-wheat circles. Astronomically, the original solar system had the eccentric orbit of Mercury skillfully depicted in proportion, whereas these jokers clearly hadn't a clue. To the key question, 'could they make the thin, circular and elliptical paths of standing corn about a foot wide (as represented the planetary orbits) I think the answer has to be, in all fairness, 'no.'

So, although it hurts to see the East Field desecrated in this way, I guess we should be grateful for M.W. & Co. for giving decisive evidence concerning the credibility of HAH, the human agency hypothesis.

Nick Kollerstrom, PhD
 

What follows is Matthew Williams reply:-

I would like to defend my position on the making of the recreation Longwood Warren formation also known as "The Earth is missing" formation.

I recently read the report sent to the list by Nick Kollerstrom. Whilst it is bordering on trying to be derogatory, Nick has made some points which need to be addressed here. Mainly I address these points because Nick has made some very wide assumptions about why we made the formation and who it was intended for. In time honoured tradition, of most crop circle researchers, Nick didn't bother to confer with me before sending out a report which contains statements about me, which are based on his own beliefs and opinions and not on facts.

I quote from the original here:

** At last, Conclusive Proof **
The Great Pretender himself, Matthew Williams, has notified us (as he said he would) of a formation made by his 'team' and it's a replica of the 1995 Solar System. Last week we received the announcement. This formation is entirely different in character from the 'real thing' in a manner that is quite unmistakable. Why, it contaminates the East Field by its mere presence. As I discussed the original solar system mandala in my talk to the CCCS Conference last month (on Cereal Geometry) I hope I may be permitted to express this opinion.
In particular, this formation showed what the judges at the original crop-circle making conference (Rupert Sheldrake & the Guardian) concluded, that humans didn't seem able to replicate the vortex-flow effect at the centre of the flattened-wheat circles. Astronomically, the original solar system had the eccentric orbit of Mercury skillfully depicted in proportion, whereas these jokers clearly hadn't a clue. To the key question, 'could they make the thin, circular and elliptical paths of standing corn about a foot wide (as represented the planetary orbits) I think the answer has to be, in all fairness, 'no.'
So, although it hurts to see the East Field desecrated in this way, I guess we should be grateful for M.W. & Co. for giving decisive evidence concerning the credibility of HAH, the human agency hypothesis.
 
Nick Kollerstrom, PhD

My replies to the above now follow in order:

Thanks for the great pretender comments. I find this a little childish though. I pretend nothing. I am a circlemaker - fact. Who knows, I've probably made more circles than you've probably been in. Some weren't even found!

Nick says that our formation is very different from the original. Well I never said it was meant to be anything like the original to any single crop circle researcher. I certainly didn't say it was to be a test of our skills to prove anything to crop circle researchers. I also never made any allusions to my representation being like the original formation at all. So why is Nick treating this formation as a yard stick of what I can do? Why did researchers assume that this was a demo for them. It wasn't. It was for a movie, not for crop circle researchers!

To set the record straight, I did not have accurate photographs or diagrams to work from. The photos I had of the original Longwood Warren formation were obtained from the net. They were low resolution grainy photos and they were taken at oblique angles. I managed to roughly correct the slant/perspective angles using PhotoShop to give me a rough idea of what the circle looked like. Still the lack of detail on the photo I was using meant I could not tell how big or small many of the circles were. Some of the circles were square pixels on my screen. Impossible to work with accurately.

I used these low resolution photos to trace from and my tracing was on Autocad, using the photos as a backdrop. Right from the very start I had decided this was an approximation, and would not emulate the real thing, because I had no accurate real model to work from. I even guessed the size of ours should be 300ft - and had no real idea of how big the original one was. So theres a major discrepancy for a start.

Next I was working with one circlemaker who was experienced and three others who had never made a crop circle before. With this in mind there was bound to be an error factor creeping in. It meant the circles around the edge we created were not the same size as I had planned on paper. However I knew this didn't matter. After all this wasn't me demonstrating to researchers just how well I could do, this was me making a crop circle for a movie that had to look similar to the original. From the air I knew that this would look pretty much as they wanted.

No effort was made, in any form to make pretty lay patterns with the corn as we went. This formation was to be made as a known man made formation, and with inexperienced circlemakers on board I didn't have the time to mess around with fancy lay. I was fully occupied (as always) with making sure people knew what they were doing and which bits they were flattening - to avoid mistakes. Thankfully there were no actual flattening errors, the whole formation was done without correction of errors or work-arounds. As I said, this was not a ground photography circle - it was only ever meant to be seen from the air. No layered lay, basket weaves, stepped pyramid lay nor 3d lay. Just quickly flattened crop.

The final design looked fine from the hills and was apparently just what the film crew needed from the air. They were very happy with it. So was I, for what it was meant to be.

I should note that the movie which is being made is going to promote crop circles as being real and paranormal and the human hypothesis isn't part of the movie - so I am told. So there you go, basically I made the formation to help out the film crew with their promotion of something good for the whole of the crop circles world. They needed that design because it was in the script. The crop circle was only a representation of the original - not a direct perfect copy... and all you can do is pick holes, unfairly, in what I was trying to do.

The East Field wasn't desecrated at all... Tim was paid.. the movie will promote crop circles in the way you'll probably be in favour of... so where is the harm in it. You sound like you own the East Field or have some strong belief that it should not be used in this way. Why? Its a field - like many others. What is the difference. I've known many **man made** circles appear in the East Field before and people have gone into orbit over them. However because mine was known man made - you follow the sheep and say words to the effect of "thats crap". How predictable.

Also, I didn't get paid. So, please rethink your points of view and check your facts before writing such stuff on newsgroups, because it wastes my time having to put these things right. After all you claim to be a Phd, so you should know at least something about checking your sources.

Anyhow... that aside - when I do come to make a formation which is meant to be an absolute perfect replica of one which has already appeared, I'll be sure to let you know. Or next time, please feel free to ask.

The pressure that I would be under to get it 100% right would be too great for me to want to attempt this anyhow, because if I made one mistake... well you know the answer to that one. Also even if it was 100% accurate, researchers would say it was utter crap and nothing like the original. So I could never win.

I have always said, to those who have come to my lectures, that I am NOT the best circlemaker out there. There are others who can far exceed the technical and complexity of crop circle execution, of myself. However where I have chosen to differ from those, who are experts at technical correctness, is to not focus myself on total accuracy but aesthetics and overall pictorial form. I believe circles should be an expression of feeling and more abstract because of that. Hard line, geometry is not totally my thing. I am into more free flowing and even feminine design ideas. Anyhow I digress. Still, I've done many geometric circles, saying that, because they are sometimes what I feel like doing.

So I will end by saying, please don't look upon the Longwood Warren replica as meaning too much. I wouldn't give researchers the opportunity to discredit my work in this way. I will post formation designs to the Total Human Solutions website before hand as proof of authorship and then come out with the revelation that I created a particular circle AFTER researchers have credited it as "non-man-made". This is the only way to stop dirty tricks from researchers.

Matthew Williams

Visitor Feedback:

There seems to be a lack of speculation theory on what makes the circles.How about satellite lasers, chemical, microwave, radio waves, controlled from ground zero, computer generated imagery is not rocket science. Something, someone, military, alien?, can be sending down lasers to super heat WATER, thus bending over stems.It's military target practice with cryptic messages..or aliens with real messages, but it has to be radio or microwave frequencies shot with pin point accuracy.........new technology? Maybe it's old.
A ? answers an opinion as both revolve circles untill a fact is found yet the facts revolve toward futher data and become one step beyond, present place,or further toward or beyond....................
I have known about crop circles for some time now, but never really thought about them until the movie "Signs" came out. I have not seen the movie yet, but have been researching the circles. They are to perfect for humans to make, maybe with a lot of machines, time and blueprints. There are other forces at work somewhere out there and they just pop in once in a while to let us know that we are not the masters of the universe.
I for one, allow myself the leisure of hoping these circles are not all hoaxes..I would hope that man is not the only ~intelligent~ species in the solar system..What a waste of space that would be
A missing item from an ordered set is always represented by number zero, not by open space. So, if 3 is missing from the set of four digits, the 'value' of the incomplete set is then expressed as 1+2+0+4=7. If you want to create the inner planets of the solar system, you must stretch the crop circle within the lenght of 7 tramlines, as the original shows. The man-made replica of "The Missing Earth" is only 5 tramlines long; in other words, it's a mental waste basket like anything else that's man-made. Homo SAPIENS kiss my butt...we just can't learn, can we?
I am sorry that I doubted you Matthew, my info was obviously incorrect.  
It is so nice to know that that you are helping the British Film Industry and that the Farmer was fully compensated for his trashed field!  
However a suggestion you could pass on to the Film Makers. Maybe the profits of such movies as these, should be shared out amongst all the other Farmers who have had to try and harvest those trashed fields over the last few decades and were not lucky enough to have such nice men such as yourselves to trash their fields for them and then receive all that compensation. Do you realise that over the years these poor guys have had to put up with a lot of rubbish on their land, People as well as Litter! 
The patterns you so called circle makers produce may sometimes be intricate, beautiful, they may even make some of us gasp with awe, wonderment, and sometimes laughter, but the circle maker is still a trespasser and should be treated as such. 
You know as well as I do that there are there people genuinely wanting answers and what you and I know is, that there will never be a definitive answer. So you feed that curiosity with whatever you can conceive to keep the punters coming back for more. It is not honest to carry on Circle making is it, it is at best childish. Can't you think of anything to do that can benefit mankind ?
A lot of focus on real and man-made circles, the guy admitted he copied the original!. Talk about a "pissin' contest"! High respect for "Phd'ers" and Scholars, nice pieces of paper and titles *Kudos & High 5's* With respect to your tunnel-vision abilities to "pick fly poop out of pepper", as most typically demonstrate publicly to hear themselves speak, I find it facinating after listening and reading your "facts and opinions" that I could tear your "educated" information apart in a matter of a moment. As with the Circles in relation to Manmade and Devine or ExtraOrdinary Intervention, some get it, most don't! ALL sources pro and con must be researched and included. If you don't have that "Devine Connection" which is given to some and most Not, you demonstrate the proof of the truth to those who really know.
Steve; the information you have is not correct. The crop circle was made for a British film with a working title of 'A Certain PLace.' It is a completely different project to the Disney production 'Signs'. 
 
It looks as if it is going to portray crop circles in a positive light, and is on a very tight budget. So they need all the help they can get.
Mr Williams may be a bigger fool than I at first thought. He says he recieved no fee for making this circle? If this is indeed the case and the info I have is correct, that the extreemly megarich Disney corporation were the clients, then I must assume that Matthew is one of those rare people who are true altruists. I personally would take the money, piroette on the spot and then run!  
Please correct me Matthew if I am wrong. But in the meantime keep up the altruism! 
Steve 
P.S. I may some projects to put to you for 2002.
Nick's remarks were uncalled for and only fan the flames of extreme polarity in divided community. If he had researched the situation at all, he would have seen that what Matthew describes above was true; it was a commercial simulation for a movie. Ad hominum attacks like "jokers" and "desecration" show us that Dr. Kollerstom is not practicing fair criticism and does not appear to appreciate academic standards for critique and debate. We have to ask, how much is his book going to be worth? Lighten up, doc!

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