[Borek]

Just out of curiosity - any particular reason why you believe in every statement found on a random web page?

[Tara144]

Just out of curiosity - any particular reason why you believe in every statement found on a random web page?

You trolling?

[Borek]

You trolling?

Quite the opposite - I am deadly serious.

You have read some random web page on which someone claimed rather extraordinary things, and you jumped in looking for an explanation. As Sagan put it - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Random web page saying "it was raining frogs", "I have seen the aliens with my own eyes", "the gasoline they sold us was saturated with (6aR,9R)-N,N-diethyl-7-methyl-4,6,6a,7,8,9-hexahydroindolo-[4,3-fg]quinoline-9-carboxamide", "the powder had the purity of 99.999%" is not an evidence of anything.

[Tara144]

Quite deadly serious!  That sounds dangerous.  My goodness. 

You're right you got me.  I just pulled up a random website and then believed everything it said.  Sometimes I just enter a string of characters into google, and whatever comes up, I find a forum on the web somewhere pertaining to it and start asking (boom, thunder) deadly serious people what they think.

Love is better than hate Borek.

[Tara144]

I don't need to defend myself for trying to use science to explain something I don't understand.  It offends you for some reason, and that's unfortunate for you, but I think it's within your power to change how you handle it.  You're not in very good company historically for reacting (lol) that way, and should probably know better.

However I am willing to share a bit, maybe it will help you. 

Nancy Talbott is a former research analyst from Harvard.  She's retired now.  She took an interest in the crop circle phenomenon because she realized it was physical, and therefore the scientific method could be applied.  There is a whole lot of rubbish in the field (lol again) and she only trusted herself and good lab work.  She connected with a couple other people who had a similar skeptical, scientific approach to circles, and they formed BLT Research.  (Nancy is the "T")  She's a very honest, down to earth, very scientific individual.

Well she and her associates found some astonishing things about the circles that suggested there was something other than guys with planks walking around at night, and did some very good field work.  The details of that work are on the BLT website, there are some papers that were in Nature on her site if anyone cares. 

I read the work because I'm curious about what crop circles are.  Someone I know who is very reputable told me they were real mysteries with more to it than hoaxers.  I was skeptical but I'm open minded.

What I'm in the process of doing is going through some of the work to see if I can come to understand what's going on.  I outlined in the thread a few times now I think why I'm interested in finding a chemical explanation for the light and the powder, mainly the magnesium. 

The lab work is all there, in the link given prior.  You have to scroll down a bit because there are some photographs of Robbert at the start, but the report is there. 

The address and contact information for the lab are in the report.  P. A. Budinger has a long track record, you can check into that too.  I encourage you to do so.

I had hoped coming here and posting observations would be sufficient that someone might say "Aha!  I know what's happening there!"

What a crime eh?

[Tara144]

Did you read the part at the end?  I guess Eberl is another person you could look into, and see if you think he's trustworthy.

Addendum...

Shortly after posting this report on the white powder with the FT-IR and ICP-MS analyses a prominent mineralogist, Dr. D.D. Eberl, contacted BLT and offered to conduct x-ray diffraction analysis of the white powder also.

Dr. Eberl analyzed the sample by x-ray diffraction on a Siemens D500 X-ray diffraction system using copper K-alpha radiation from 5-65 degrees two-theta, 0.02 degree steps, 5 sec count time per step, using a graphite monochromator. He was able to confirm both the chemistry and FTIR we had run previously, stating that the white powder is "pure hydromagnesite." He also expressed the opinion that "it must be synthetic, because it is so pure." Its chief use seems to be as a fire retardant; its formula is:

Mg5(CO3)4(OH)2 ·4(H2O)

When it is heated the CO3 decomposes to CO2 and water (4H2O) is given off. (OH)2 also releases water, thus smothering fire.

It has another interesting property in that hydromagnesite is said to be fairly fluorescent and would, therefore, glow as long as it is exposed to UV light (Short UV = green, Long UV = bluish-white).

I find them all very trustworthy.

(Oh wait, he's actually a monkey.  http://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=m6tAqpQAAAAJ&hl=en)

[Borek]

OK, that's enough.