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Jakarta Post

Letter: The Yogya crop circle

For more than a week the Indonesian press reported in great detail speculations on the creator of those “mysterious” crop circles in a paddy field in Sleman, Yogyakarta

The Jakarta Post
Wed, February 9, 2011 Published on Feb. 9, 2011 Published on 2011-02-09T11:43:00+07:00

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Letter: The Yogya crop circle

F

or more than a week the Indonesian press reported in great detail speculations on the creator of those “mysterious” crop circles in a paddy field in Sleman, Yogyakarta. Aliens made them — humans made them. Superstition and ignorance seemed to dominate the opinions.

The nearest planets to Earth in this huge universe are hundreds or thousands of light years away from our planet — an impossible distance for UFOs to travel. The circles are not man-made of course. And the phenomenon was no mystery at all. It was simply the “footprint” of the start of a mini-cyclone.

The air on this low lying plain was heated up by the sun more than the air at the mostly higher surroundings which is covered by trees and bushes.

Hot air is lighter than cooler air, and therefore starts to rise creating a low-air-pressure cyclone. As it is known, the cyclones on the southern hemisphere spin clockwise.

The fastest rotation occurs in the outer ring. The initial small diameter of the ring-like cyclone can get larger sucking in more surrounding hot air until a balance of air pressure with the environment is established.

This seems to have happened in the paddy field. The spinning mini-cyclone started smaller in the center, extended its diameter and died off when all hot air was elevated and the air pressure at the ground was equalized.

This can be proved by monitoring the direction that the stalks were pressed down in and the fact that the stems of the paddy plants in the ring-like pattern are bent. If the creator of this paddy field design was a mini-cyclone, the lying stalks would also point into a clockwise direction. Did nobody look for that?

Herwig Zahorka
    Wiesbaden, Germany

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