Crop Circle in Indonesia; UFO or Man-Made?

Police Don’t See Artful, or Funny, Side of Crop-Circle ‘Vandalism’
Candra Malik|January 26, 2011

Yogyakarta. Police and government investigators say they have proof the curious crop circles that appeared in rice fields in Sleman and Bantul this week are, believe it or not, man-made and that those responsible for them could be charged with vandalism.



Sri Kaloka Prabotasari, head of the Center for Applied Sciences at the National Space and Aviation Agency (Lapan), told the Jakarta Globe late on Tuesday that evidence had been found linking the Sleman crop circle to a more earthly creation — footprints.

She said the agency found four other signs supporting their conclusion that the phenomena were man-made.

“We found a 25-centimeter-deep and four-centimeter-wide hole in the center of the crop circle that we believe was made by a pole or a pipe,” she said, adding that there were also broken and uprooted paddy stalks “because someone stepped on them.”

The agency concluded that a piece of rope was used to form the patterns.

The one in Bantul, Sri said, was easier to figure out.

“We found that the radius of the circle is not consistent. One side was 2.1 meters, while the other was 2.5 meters. It was clearly man-made.”

The agency’s analysis was backed up by aerial photographs taken by geodesy investigators from the University of Gadjah Mada (UGM), which revealed inconsistencies in the pattern that dispelled any notion they could have been made by landing spaceships.

“For instance, the pattern of eight fishes in the second-line circle are not symmetrical,” Catur Aries Rokhmana, head of the Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing laboratory at the university’s School of Geodesy, said on Wednesday.

However, Catur added that the people responsible for the crop circles deserve credit for managing to produce the patterns so quickly.

But local police were not so complimentary.

Adj. Comr Danang Kuntadi, Sleman Police Chief of detectives, said police were intent on finding the crop circle makers and would follow up claims on the Web site www.studentmagz.com that science and mathematics students from UGM were the culprits behind the stunt.

He said they would be charged with vandalism, with a maximum punishment of two years and eight months in jail.

Chairil Anwar, dean of UGM’s Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, said police should not take the crop circles so seriously.

“Regardless of how much rice was damaged, we must appreciate the crop circles as a beautiful work of art. If the farmers and the field owners complain of lost crops and if our students are proven to be involved, we are ready to be consulted about the compensation we should pay,” he said.

No students have yet come forward to make a confession.

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