Origins

 

EARTHQUEST NEWS

The Andrew Collins Newsletter

Vol. 10 No.2 (Autumn 2007)

Hi, and welcome to a UFO, alien, crop circle special of this newsletter. But before we can go into any of that, I must reintroduce you to QuestCon07, this year's Questing Conference, being held in Glastonbury on Sat/Sun, 3rd & 4th November. Included on the bill is an opening and closing performance honouring Bridget, Glastonbury's patron goddess, along with special visits out to sacred places locally in order to witness the setting of the sun and the rising of the stars. Plus there is an emphasis on talks where the topics of psychic questing and contact with possible otherworldly intelligences is the norm, as opposed to purely straight historical presentations of the sort seen in previous years. In addition to this, QuestCon07 will mark Cygnus Day in Glastonbury. This is the moment when the town's gigantic landscape effigy of a swan, first recorded by local Goddess expert Kathy Jones, aligns with the position on the landscape of the setting sun. This occurs on Sunday, 4th November, the eve both of Bonfire Night and the November cross-quarter day - the original date of Samhain, the old European festival of life and death.


Special guests for the weekend include Graham Hancock (confirmed), Kathy Jones, Yuri Leitch, Paul Weston, Richard Ward, Geoff Stray, Caroline Wise, and Ross Hemsworth, proprietor of the newly established Glastonbury Radio, who are supporting the event. Details of all talks are given online at www.questcon.org. Writer-researcher Nicholas Mann, a Glastonbury resident, has now joined the bill. He will talk about Glastonbury's relationship to the sun, moon and stars, and show how the sun rolls up the Tor soon after dawn on the winter solstice, a quite spectacular site. As previously mentioned, I'll deliver two all-new presentations - 'The Palaeolithic origins of the Cosmic Mother', showing how the Cygnus constellation is behind the oldest painting of a Goddess form anywhere in the world, and 'The Cygnus-Giza Correlation', on Cygnus and its impact on the evolution of the Giza complex.

Celebrate the mysteries of the ancients with us in Glastonbury, and make a weekend of it. Weekend ticket are £32 in advance, £35 on the day. We shan't know whether day tickets will be available until nearer the time. For full details on how to obtain online tickets go to www.questcon.org. Speaking Tree Books of Glastonbury are dealing with credit card bookings by phone. Ring 01458.831800. Otherwise apply in writing (using the reply coupon on the flyer) to Questing Conference, PO Box 3242, Marlborough, Wiltshire SN8 1UZ.

CROP CIRCLES BACK IN THE NEWS
This year crop circles have returned to the news following dramatic claims that a huge formation appeared in a Wiltshire field in a flash of light one night in July. Since it is an incident that is being hailed as the most important development in crop circle research for years, it is worth bringing you the facts of the matter.

On the morning of Saturday, 7 July, news reached me of a giant crop formation that had appeared overnight in East Field, Alton Barnes, the premier site for such works of art over the past 17 years. Since I now live so close to crop circle territory, and was to talk to a London crop circle group visiting the area that day, I arranged to meet them in this new formation. The best vantage point to examine crop formations in East Field is Knap Hill, so my wife Sue and I went there first, before making our way down to East Field. From the elevated vantage point it was clear that the formation - over 1,000 feet in length, 500 feet across and made up of no less than 150 circles - consisted of two enormous crescents formed out of dozens of circles, attached to which were appendages constructed from more bubble-like circles, giving the whole thing the impression of the OM symbol. I also saw it as no coincidence that the date was 7th July, which could be written 7.7.7, with 777 being a mystical number relating to God and the Elohim (Sons of God, or angels), among other things.

Inside the formation, we learned that its appearance had apparently been accompanied by a massive aerial flash sometime around 3 am, and that someone on Knap Hill had videoed the whole thing. This sounded promising, and so I awaited further news with some anticipation. This came finally at a press conference held in Alton Barnes' Coronation Hall on Thursday, 19th July. It was called by Terje Tofteness, a Norwegian crop circle enthusiast and video producer, who had now had a chance to examine the video footage taken on the night concerned. Present was Gary King of Cardiff, and his friend Paula Presdee Jones, both of whom had been on Knap Hill when the formation appeared. They recalled how they had spent the early hours in the company of a man named Win Keech, who was monitoring East Field with a barrage of optical recording equipment, including various cameras, camcorders and video recorders. King reported how at 01.35 Keech used a camera switched to night vision in order to sweep East Field for signs of activity, and saw nothing. Then at around three o'clock (later asserted to be either 3.08 or 3.13) all three people present saw an aerial flash, which they said was recorded on video just as the equipment picked up what King and Tofteness described as evidence of an 'electromagnetic pulse'. Then at 03.20, as the light gradually came up, one camera began to pick out the presence in East Field of a huge crop formation, even though this was not realised at the time; those present having to wait until 03.45 to spot the formation with their own eyes.

Gary King answered questions posed by the assembled audience, as did Terje Toftenes, who provided a suitably dramatic build up to the screening of Win Keech's vital video footage. Yet in the end this consisted only of a very brief sweep across a hazy East Field, apparently at 01.35, showing that nothing was present. It was followed by even briefer footage of white electrical fuzz on a dark screen, apparently taken at 03.13 (later revised to 3.08), said to be the effects of an 'electromagentic pulse' and the aerial flash witnessed by the group. This occurs at the very dying seconds of a tape being used at that time. Finally, there was a further few seconds of the crop formation present in East Field in the pre-dawn light at a time of 03.20.

King informed the audience at Coronation Hall that since East Field had been scanned by a night vision camera at 01.35, and the East Field crop formation was present on camera at 03.20, there is no way it could be of human manufacture. He stated that all cars entering the area during the period in question were noted, and no movement or lights were seen in East Field. Moreover, it would be impossible for any group of circle makers to have constructed a 1,000-feet long formation of 150 circles inside one and three-quarter hours. In addition to this, the presence of the aerial flash, recorded on camera along with the 'electromagnetic pulse', were hard evidence that some kind of supernatural agency was responsible for the crop formation.

I, however, have some difficulty accepting this story. My colleague Rodney Hale, a bespoke technical engineer, with considerable knowledge and experience in the examination of video, photographic and electrical anomalies, was asked to evaluate a two-second sequence of Win Keech's original video footage, showing the appearance of the alleged flash and 'electromagnetic pulse'. That same day, Monday, 16 July (i.e. three days before the Coronation Hall press conference), Rodney concluded in an email to crop circle physical effects expert Lucy Pringle and Gary King that the white fuzz, recorded across a period of around one third of a second by the video camera - which at the time was attached via a long cord, fed across the roof of Keech's car, to a video recorder positioned inside the vehicle - was the result of a 'temporarily poor electrical contact in the circuit or a slight break down in the component'. This could have been caused by a bad contact (a common electrical fault), or alternatively it might well have been the result of damage at the end of the tape being used. Either way, it caused a disturbance in the equipment, resulting in various frames showing horizontal 'sparks', as well as the camera image jumping vertically, as the camera re-synchronized itself.

If this analysis is correct, it provides a mundane explanation for the resulting footage and removes the idea that the camera, or its cord, recorded some kind of 'electromagnetic pulse'. This is confirmed by the fact that the camera's audible channel - presumed to have been running - was silent during the recording (an external EM pulse would have caused audible static, what is known as 'white noise').


A selected sequence of frames across 2 seconds showing the white fuzz, interpreted as an external 'flash', that occurred across a period of approximately 1/3 of a second. Note frame 5 where the camera image shifts vertically, interpreted by Terje Toftenes as direct evidence of the flash lighting up the horizon (Pic credit: Win Keech/Rodney Hale).

Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever of any external imagery being recorded by the camera before, during or after the white fuzz disturbance, other then the constant presence of very distant lights in the right-hand upper register of the screen, as well as the extremely faint view of Woodborough Hill and a clump of trees on the skyline. This means that claims implying that the camera lens recorded the flash are completely unfounded. Whatever Keech, King and his friend saw visually was not what was recorded on the video equipment.

In addition to this, Rodney went further and analysed the imagery recorded by the video recorder just prior to and immediately after the white fuzz on the tape. 22 frames before the 'flash' were used to create an overlay in order to enhance the image being seen by the camera - 26 frames being used to create a similar overlay of the situation in East Field immediately after the 'flash'. Both overlays show the presence of a sizeable dark patch in East Field, which matches very well the exact shape and position of the crop formation as viewed by the camera at 03.20, when the light was enough to reveal its presence. This is powerful evidence that the formation was present before the white fuzz was recorded on the tape at 03.08/03.13.

Image One: Using 16 frames from the Win Keech video footage immediately prior to the 'flash', or white fuzz, of 03.08 on 07 July 2007, this image is created. It shows a well defined dark shadow where as we can see from Image Two the crop formation was created overnight.

IMPORTANT NOTE: although a time of 03.13 appears on the frame (as it does on all others from this sequence), this line was added afterwards by Terje Toftenes. Later Win Keech, Gary King and Toftenes insisted that the real time of the camera disturbance was 03.08. The time has not been changed on the frames.(Pic Copyright: Win Keech/Rodney Hale).

Image Two: an enhanced image of the East Field crop formation at 03.20 on 07 July 2007, after enough light enabled its recording by the camera lense (Pic credit: Win Keech).

Image Three: The outline of principal features contained in East Field as determined by the enhanced image of 03.20 on 07 July 2007 superimposed on the overlay composed from the frames taken immediately prior to the 'flash', or white fuzz, recorded at 03.08. Note the direct comparison between the outline of the formation and the shadow seen in Image One (Pic credit: Win Keech/Rodney Hale).

Even though Win Keech saw nothing visually in East Field when it was scanned at 01.35 using a night vision lens, the crop formation straddled a ridge, making its furthest parts very difficult to see from Knap Hill, even in daylight. It would have been virtually impossible for anyone to have made out what was going on in the same area through a night vision camera. The presence of individuals working under the cover of darkness in that field might easily have gone unnoticed.

The reported aerial flash seen by Keech, King and his friend around three o'clock is, of course, interesting. However, it is meaningless when it comes to determining who was responsible for the creation of the formation. As I wrote back in 1994 in my book ALIEN ENERGY, flashes of light are occasionally reported in connection with the presence of crop formations (I witnessed one myself above a formation in East Field during the 1994 summer season), and they have been noted by groups of circle makers when out making circles. It is possible that the mere presence of a crop formation can trigger aerial discharges simply by disturbing the field's subtle energy matrix, constrained by naturally-occurring magnetic fields. However, there is always the possibility that what was witnessed that night was either atmospheric lightning, or something even more mundane. What is being claimed about the East Field formation of 7.7.7 is simply not enough to claim its construction by a supernatural agency. Why can't an avid crop circle enthusiast, a filmmaker perhaps, sit on Knap Hill with a long range infrared camera trained on East all night. Then if a formation does appear instantly they will have recorded it for sure. On the other hand, such footage might equally capture the formation being made over a period of time by a handful of capable individuals.
For more on the East Field crop formation see the DVD 'East Field Press Conference' by Music Energy of Belfast, or go to http://exopolitics.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=187&Itemid=1.

UPDATE 20 Sept 07

Today I spoke with a gentleman named Russell Kellett of Filey, North Yorkshire. He is the purchaser of Win Keech's footage that apparently shows the East Field formation being constructed over a period of 15 minutes as viewed from Knap Hill. The two men are good friends, and it is now their intention to sell the footage to the highest possible bidder, hopefully a TV company with a massive production budget.

The footage is from one of the other four cameras that were rolling overnight prior to the appearance of the East Field formation. Allegedly, it shows it being created over a period of 15 minutes, like 'a shadow creeping across the crop', from south to north.

Kellett says he does not recall seeing any flash on the footage prior to the appearance of the formation, as was reported by Win Keech and those present on the hill at the time.

I asked him over what period of time this incident was recorded, and he says sometime around three o'clock onwards.

I put it too him that the footage would need analysis, and he said 'what for?'

I suggested that it might be enhanced to show the formation appearing in better light.

He responded that: 'It is what it is. It shows it forming over a period of 15 minutes'.

I was intrigued by the statement that the formation emerged gradually like a shadow creeping across the crop, for shadows have to be cast, whether it be by the sun, moon or stars. The fact that the formation 'appeared' over a 15 minute period might immediately suggest that the increased light was gradually causing the shadows, which then enabled anyone standing on Knap Hill to pick out details of the formation for the first time.

Kellett was not happy with this suggestion, saying that it was not really shadow.

However, I pointed out that it is the contrast between shadow and light that enables you to pick out features in the crop in low light.

Kellett said that he had presented BBC Wiltshire with a sequence of frames from the aforementioned footage, which now appears online.

He guided me to it, and I later downloaded the GIF file, which actually consists of 7 frames, all without a time code.

Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/images/2007/08/14/flash_plus_1min_per sec_320x240.gif.

I have examined these in sequence, which appears to be correct, and shows the gradual increase in light over East Field. I can make out the shape of the formation in six out of the seven frames. The final frame, the first of the sequence, is too dark to make out anything in the field.

This does not therefore constitute evidence of the formation appearing during this same period, which would have been exactly as the light
increased that morning.

However, I am intrigued by the contents of the full 15 minute sequence that Russell Kellett now possesses, and eagerly await its appearance on some DVD.

He promised to show it to me next year sometime, when next he is in the area.


LIFE IN PLASMA

New evidence has emerged to suggest that life can exist outside the standard carbon model. VN Tsytovich of the General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Science, in Moscow, working alongside colleagues there and at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and the University of Sydney, Australia, have determined that under certain conditions non-organic substances, essentially microscopic dust, can combine to form complex mixtures that bear distinct evidence of self-organisation. Normally, physicists might see such structures as simply random, but Tsytovich and his colleagues have noticed that microscopic strands of these solid particles seem to twist into corkscrew shapes, or helical structures, which become attracted to each other since they are electronically charged. Not only do these strands appear to intuitively organise themselves, like to like, but they can change in a manner reminiscent of biological molecules, such as DNA proteins, which are, of course, the building blocks of life.

Moreover, these inorganic strands are able to divide, or bifurcate, making copies of themselves, which in turn interact with other strands to form new structures able to induce changes in their neighbours, and even evolve into even more complex structures, leaving less able ones to dissolve, or break down. This means that only the fittest survive, all very reminiscent of biological life. Thus it becomes conceivable that under certain conditions, this organisation of inorganic matter could constitute evidence for the existence of new types of life.

Yet there is one important additional fact about the existence of these organised strands of inorganic matter, for they have been detected only in plasma, the fourth state of matter, which might need some explanation. Solid objects constitute the first state of matter, and when these are heated they become liquid, the second state of matter, and when liquid is heated it becomes gas, which is the third state of matter. All three co-exist together in the universe, and can change from one to the other, most obviously through the processes of heat and compression. However, there is a fourth state of matter, and this is plasma, which is ionised gas (composed of ions - that is atoms where an electron has broken free to leave behind a positively charged atom - as well as free electrons and also neutral particles). Plasma (not to be confused with the plasma in our blood) is most familiar to us as lightning, or even as the glow of a fire.

A plasma sphere.

According to Tsytovich: 'These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter … they are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve.' He notes that the ideal plasma environments necessary to create these helical structures are common in outer space. Thus it is possible that within deep space, plasma-based life could exist.

Much of the light we see coming from stars, nebula and supernovae is plasma, while the sun itself is a 1.5-million-kilometer ball of plasma, heated by nuclear fusion. In its superheated form, plasma is also produced by black holes and neutron stars. Not only does it make up the rings that surround them, but it also forms the great jets or particle beams which shoot out along their lines of axis at close to the speed of light, causing energy releases across the electromagnetic spectrum (including ultra high energy cosmic rays).

It has been theorized that the core of a neutron star - created when a regular star that has used up its nuclear fuels collapses to form a compact object no larger than 10-20 kms in diameter - consists of a special type of plasma known as quark-gluon plasma. Indeed, neutron stars are the most likely place to find quark-gluon plasma, which is thought to have filled the universe shortly after the Big Bang.

Plasma ball (Pic credit: www.rialian.com).

All this might lead to speculation that neutron stars are a major source of plasma-based life forms, and may even be intelligent in their own right. It is a theory I have contemplated for some time now. It is one also that begs the question of whether such inorganic life might be considered a thinking entity, accessible to sympathetic mental communication with the likes of ourselves.

Tsytovich points out that plasma can be created at the point of a lightning strike, and since the self-organising inorganic structures that form in plasma, or plasmons as Tsytovich calls them, are so close to the nature of biological molecules, then perhaps this enabled the creation of templates for the first organic molecules, which went on to create life on Earth. As forward thinking as such ideas might seem, it flies in the face of the so-called exobiological origin of life, which suggests that it came to Earth on an extraterrestrial vehicle, most probably a meteor, asteroid or comet. This is the so-called theory of panspermia, literally life everywhere. Interestingly, bright meteors, known as fireballs, burn up to create plasma, which might also have brought the template of life to Earth. Moreover, there is nothing to stop life evolving from plasmons elsewhere in the cosmos, and then hitching a ride to Earth. For the original story on the discovery of plasmons go to Physorg.com, 09 August 2007 @ http://physorg.com/news105869123.html. Thanks to regular correspondents Adam Crowl and Eileen Buchanan for drawing this story to my attention.


PLASMONS - THE ANSWER TO ALIEN ENERGY

The implications of inorganic plasmatic life forms existing in the universe goes well beyond these fascinating possibilities, for there is every chance that many forms of unidentified aerial phenomena are in fact plasmas constrained within powerful electromagnetic fields. This has been the conclusion of various researchers into the subject of UFOs for 25 years, with the works of forward-thinking individuals such as Paul Devereux and Michael Persinger leading the field. They followed in the footsteps of early pioneers in this area of study, including the late Phillip Klass, a former senior avionics editor of AVIATION WEEK, who proposed as early as 1968 that UFOs were plasmas - he called them 'plasmoids'. That some UFOs are plasmas was also the conclusion of the British Ministry of Defence (MoD), following a four-year study under the codename Project Condign. They noted that plasmas form themselves into moving light forms that can behave strangely and cause psychological side-effects in human bystanders, something also discovered by Michael Persinger, whose work almost certainly influenced the findings of the MoD.

In ALIEN ENERGY, I outlined numerous cases where observed light forms (known also as earth lights, fairy lights or Will o' the Wisps) seemed to possess signs of independent intelligence. They either responded to observers, appeared on command, or acted in a manner suggesting intuitive thinking. Some of these cases might be explained as either chance or unconscious telekinetic manipulation (utilising the principles of quantum entanglement or non-locality - the idea that particles can split in two and still respond or mimic each other at any distance, even on the other side of the universe). However, there is clear evidence that exotic light forms have a sentience and respond to human interaction. In the knowledge that within the medium of plasma inorganic life might be found, could life of this order exist within exotic light forms? Might plasma forms be able to communicate with each other, perhaps even with similar plasma-based life forms in deep space?

Of course, none of this helps explain the witnessing of so-called structured UFOs, claimed throughout the world over the last 70 years. Nor does it offer a simple solution to the strange entities seen in connection with such space vehicles. However, it might start to help us unravel the nature of some abduction experiences. Very powerful electromagnetic fields of the sort thought to be generated by exotic light forms can seriously affect the brain, causing strong physiological effects, such as nausea, black outs and radiation sickness, as well as powerful psychological effects, such as hallucinations, delusions and near-death experiences. It is even possible, as I speculated in ALIEN ENERGY, that the closer you get to these light forms, the more space-time becomes distorted before finally ceasing to function altogether.

Recently, I reported on new scientific evidence showing that exotic forms of cosmic rays reaching Earth from Cygnus X-3 - a binary star system in this galaxy containing a suspected neutron star - display unique qualities as they were created in unimaginable gravitational fields powerful enough to warp reality to such a degree that the normally folded or dormant Fifth Dimension is allowed to have an effect on the four normal dimensions, i.e. the three of space and one of time (what we know as 'space-time'). This is the finding of Gergely Gabor Barnaföldi of the Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Budapest (See my report by clicking here.

Thus the strange cosmic rays coming from Cygnus X-3, and known as 'cygnets', are the way they are because they were created in a plasmatic environment associated with a neutron star totally alien to normal space-time. If so, then this means that some plasma-related realms could exist across five instead of four dimensions, enabling them to function outside the normal constrains of space-time. So if exotic light forms are plasmas, then it is possible that Fifth Dimensional environments can exist within them as well. This could lead to an interaction between the witness and the phenomenon that would remove them temporarily from the constraints of space-time, leading to experiences in five dimensions instead of four.

If time loss experiences can be believed, such encounters might last anything from a few minutes to a few days, during which time the percipients will, quite frankly, have not existed in this physical reality. It was a subject I examined in ALIEN ENERGY, particularly the concept of missing time during abductions. In many cases the time away, so to speak, bears no connection with the abductees' memory recall, whether consciously or following hypnosis, and in some cases there is clear evidence that the person was removed from this plane and replaced back as if they had been moved from one moment in time to the next instantaneously, even though they had 'disappeared' from the spot in the intervening time period. Yet it was during this missing time that the abduction experience occurred, providing dislocated memories of the time away. Entering a Fifth Dimensional environment during this time might well explain such anomalies in space-time.

Moreover, it is likely that during their interaction with a Fifth Dimensional realm, witnesses may well find themselves in mental communication with the assumed consciousness of plasma based life forms, whose basic structure is, as we have seen, very similar to that of organic life. Once again, the processes of quantum entanglement and non-locality would come into play to enable this interplay to occur. Thus what we perceive to be alien beings, or indeed any other type of communicating being, might in fact be the collective 'mind' of the plasma-based life, broadcast into our brains during extremely close encounters with a Fifth Dimensional environment, the appearances of such entities dictated by earthly preconceptions of otherworldly contact, whether it be with aliens, fairies, demons or some other archetypal form.

Alien abductions are not as straight forward as most people seem to think. Seeing them all as purely physical experiences relating to flesh and blood ETs and nuts and bolts spacecraft is plainly naive. Only by investigating revolutionary new concepts such as the possibility of plasma life and its assumed relationship to biological life, including us, can we hope to understand what is truly going on out there.

Check out out SpectralLight.com, a forward thinking site on the melding of psychic questing with paranormal investigations and magic.

To buy copies of ALIEN ENERGY click here.

Origins