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For the first time, archaeologists, geologists, biologists, linguists, sociologists and representatives of other specialties related to field trips will come together on one site. Their goal is to clearly and clearly tell about the main results of the 2017 season.

We all have an idea of ​​what happens in scientific laboratories and why scientists work in them. At least that's what we'd like to think. For example, they released a new medicine or developed an artificial prosthesis that is indistinguishable from the real one, discovered gravitational waves, and so on... But why do they go to different parts of the world every summer with huge backpacks and a bunch of equipment unknown to us, sometimes even at the risk of their lives, with a minimum of comfort and a result incomprehensible to us?

The cultural and educational center "Arhe" and the popular science magazine "Schrödinger's Cat" invite you to understand this and

discover the secrets of field expeditions!

Program of the popular science conference

"Science in the Fields"

11:00-11:30

Ilya Volodin, MSU

(Doctor of Biological Sciences, Leading Researcher, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov)

Feel like a deer.

Study of rutting calls of male red deer.

The red deer has a lowered larynx, like a human's, and its calls vary fantastically between populations in different parts of its range. To understand what information is contained in the rutting calls of males, the expedition members recorded them at a deer farm in the Kostroma region. To obtain high-quality recordings at close range, scientists began to behave like pretending males, which allowed them to “fit in” with the herd and see the deer rutting through their eyes.

11:30-12:00

Maria Letarova, Institute of Microbiology RAS

(FRC "Biotechnologies" RAS)

Layered lakes of the White Sea.

How microbial processes are similar to those that occurred on the oxygen-free Earth billions of years ago.

The coastline of the Kandalaksha Bay of the White Sea is very indented. Some microbays separate into lakes. Due to the fact that the water in these lakes practically does not mix, microbial processes begin to occur in them, exactly the same as those that occurred on the oxygen-free Earth billions of years ago. We thoroughly studied how one of these lakes works and, a little less thoroughly, nine more. We went to the lakes, took measurements, and there was a fairly large cameral part. To explore more remote lakes, we went on a voyage on the ship “Professor Zavarzin”. The story will be about all of this.

12:00-12:30

Yulia Mazurova, Institute of Linguistics RAS

(PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, Department of Typology and Areal Linguistics, Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences)

What languages ​​do the gods of the Himalayas speak?

Study of one of the minor Indo-Aryan languages ​​of Northern India - Kullui.

12:30 - 12:40 - Coffee break

1 2:40 - 13:10

Grigory Tsidulko, Marine Mammal Council

(Expert at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Consultant for the film “Born Free”)

How many saber-toothed animals are there in the Arctic?

You will find a story about an expedition to study walruses in the Pacific part of the Arctic. A joint expedition of the KFTIG FEB RAS, the Marine Mammal Council and the Fish and Wildlife Service, with the participation of other institutes and organizations, took place in June 2017 and was part of a large joint five-year project to study one of the most amazing inhabitants of the Arctic - walruses. Over the course of a month, researchers from Russia and the United States traveled along the entire ice edge of the Pacific sector of the Arctic on the Russian scientific vessel "Professor Moltunovsky". You will learn how scientific marine expeditions are organized and why this is done, what it is like to be a marine biologist and work in the Arctic.

13:10 - 13:40

Ksenia Studenikina, Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov

“Ruddy House” and other unusual features of the Mountain Mari language.

Results of linguistic expeditions to Mari El.

You will find a story about a linguistic expedition to study the Mountain Mari language. Since 2016, in the fall, spring and summer, field work has been carried out by linguists from Moscow State University in the village of Kuznetsovo in the Gornomarisky district of the Mari El Republic.

Unlike the closely related Meadow Mari, Mountain Mari has been studied less well, and we are trying to fill this gap. Traditional descriptions of language say a lot about how to say things, but little about how not to. Meanwhile, this is very important for modern science (we will explain why in the lecture). Many small languages ​​of Russia are poorly studied in this regard, and this is an obstacle to the development of linguistics as a whole.

We have selected for you the most interesting and unusual phenomena of the mountain Mari language. For example, we will tell you why in local Russian it is normal to say “ruddy house” and “pour yourself some sugar”, but in Mountain Mari itself “pat the cat on the back” literally sounds like “pat the cat from the back” (which is rare for the world’s languages). In addition, during the expedition we get to know the life and everyday life of the Mari, their culture and traditions, as well as the local blog culture. Have you ever heard Mari songs performed with a guitar? Our report will include something like this.

13:40 - 14:10

Dmitry Rogozin, RANEPA

(Candidate of Sociological Sciences, field interviewer at RANEPA, one of the leading specialists in sociological research methods)

Who produces “public opinion”?

Based on materials from field research in 2017.

"There are public professions, in plain sight. A bus driver, a salesman, a policeman. Everyone knows about them, they talk about them. And there are invisible, inconspicuous ones. Take sailors. Few people realize that every minute there are thousands of ships at sea. But if you have the desire, you can see. For example, there is such a map, MapAIS. On it all the ships that are on the way, at a glance. Take a field interviewer. Who knows about him? Sometimes on TV it will flash: “according to the Levada Center” or “VTsIOM”. And there are hundreds polling companies are sheer invisible people. We deal with public issues, while we ourselves are like spies, in the shadows. My speech is dedicated to the invisible, non-public profession of a field interviewer, creating public opinion."

14:10 - 14:40

Ilya Gomyranov(MSU)

Uzbekistan. The story of life in the desert .

Complex Russian-Uzbek expedition.

“Most of Uzbekistan is occupied by deserts, in which the air temperature rises to 45 degrees, and the ground heats up even more. Hundreds of amazing animals and plants have learned to live among these extreme conditions. Many areas of the country are inaccessible due to the lack of roads, water, and often because for strict access control.

During our comprehensive Russian-Uzbek expedition, we traveled through most of the country, visiting remote and inaccessible regions such as the Ustyurt Plateau and the Nurata Mountains, and the route covered more than 4 thousand kilometers. The expedition participants, professional zoologists and botanists, collected extensive biological material, compiling not only lists of species, but also describing the features of life. During the expedition, in addition to the collected material for museum collections, as well as lists of species for each group of living organisms, detailed photographs of animals in their natural habitat were taken, which will become an important element of scientific results.

Among the discovered species, we found several for the first time in the history of science on the territory of the country, and one of the salpugs was found for the second time since its description in Iran. "

14:40 - 15:10 Big coffee break

15:10 - 15:40

Lenya Yuldashev, a club for internet and society lovers (http://clubforinternet.net/ )

Internet - wires, sites, poles and users?

How to study the history of the Internet in Russia

The Internet and Society Club is an informal association of Internet researchers. In 2016, we launched a research initiative. We want to understand what the Internet is in the regions of Russia, how different people in our country use it. We travel to different cities, explore how the Internet works there, talk to the creators of the Internet environment, study users and their experiences. This is how we learn what the Internet is after the utopia of a global network space.

Together with the Higher School of Economics and HSE students, we went to Voronezh and Tyumen, and also went to Tomsk and Lobnya ourselves. There we interviewed providers, media, service organizers and users.
During the trip we write a blog - we record the process; on the last day of your stay in the city, we make a presentation at the university and at the city site - we record the intermediate result and return the history of its Internet to the city in its “raw” form; after (right now) we write a journalistic article - we present to the public what we found; we write scientific articles.

We want to talk about how this turns out and, together with the conference participants, think about how to improve the format of the expedition so that it will benefit both the participants, the city, and science.

15:40 - 16:10

Polina Volkova, Institute of Biology of Inland Waters named after. I.D. Papanin RAS

The country of winds and fogs.

Botanical expedition to Medny Island.

Medny Island is the second largest island of the Commander archipelago, which is located at the western tip of the Aleutian island arc, on the border between the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The border position of Medny Island is the reason for the uniqueness of its flora, which includes both Kamchatka and North American species, many of which in Russia are found only on the Commanders. The distance from the mainland, difficult climatic conditions and the lack of settlements on Medny Island explain the insufficient knowledge of its unique flora.
The expedition to Medny Island lasted a month and a half (of which the participants spent six days on a yacht). As a result, many plant species were discovered that had not previously been recorded for the island or even for the entire archipelago (and one species was new to the flora of Russia). In addition, we assessed the state of populations of rare species, many of which are included in the Red Books of the Russian Federation and the Kamchatka Territory; this data is already being used to prepare new editions of these Red Books.

16:10 - 16:40

Alexander Agafonov, Institute of Oceanology named after. P.P. Shirshov RAS

(researcher at the laboratory of marine mammals at the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, specialist in the acoustic specialization of marine mammals.)

Why do sea hares whistle?

White Sea coastal-sea expedition.

You will find a story about an expedition whose goal was to audio record the underwater acoustic signals of sea hares (Erignatus barbatus) during the reproductive period. The 2017 work area is Unskaya Bay (Onega Bay of the White Sea). Why is this necessary? And what did the audio recording give to scientists? What new type of signals was discovered? You will hear about all this in the report of Alexander Agafonov.

16:40 - 16:50 Coffee break

16:50 - 17:20

Kirill Vlasov(geologist),

Artem Akshintsev(ecologist) - employees of RAS institutes, experts of the Russian Travel Geek project

Soda, lions, volcanoes and bacteria.

Results of a comprehensive expedition to Tanzania

For most people, wild trails are places that are as attractive as they are mysterious. For example, Kamchatka was once considered a regime territory, even though its area is twice the size of Britain. Most of the peninsula is occupied by volcanoes and mountain ranges, completely penetrated by glacial rivers. In Kamchatka there are only three small cities and several dozen villages; the rest of the area, in fact, is a kingdom of pristine nature. And in the midst of these wild lands, RAS researchers work. You will find a story about the specifics of such work, and live field diaries from the place of symbiosis between Science and Travel. Kamchatka, Iceland, Africa all these regions have a place in our story.

17:20 - 17:50

Alexandra Petrunina, Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosova

40 days in the Pacific Ocean.

My experience of participating in the deep-sea expedition KURAMBIO II.

In 2016, a German-Russian deep-sea voyage took place to the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench area. Forty scientists from nine countries aboard the German R/V Sonne spent forty days collecting material from the ultra-abyssal depths of the Pacific Ocean to study the biodiversity of the region. We are waiting for you a fascinating story about the KURAMBIO II voyage and the results of our deep-sea research and the prospects for this area of ​​science.

17:50 - 18:20

Vladislav Zhitenev, Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosova

Secrets of Kapova and Ignatievskaya caves.

Results of the South Ural archaeological expedition of Moscow State University.

New drawings of primitive people were found by the South Ural archaeological expedition of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. Scientists and students explored the Kapova and Ignatievskaya caves, located in Bashkiria and the Chelyabinsk region, respectively. In Kapova Cave, rock paintings were discovered there in 1959. These are the first Paleolithic paintings found anywhere other than the famous caves in France and Spain. They are approximately 17,000–19,000 years old. Archaeologists work here every year. They described images of a woolly rhinoceros, a bison, a horse and, of course, a mammoth. In addition, there are figures of a fish, rarely found in Europe, and a certain creature that combines the features of a human and an animal. The main result of the season is the discovery of new drawings and their fragments in the cave, which has been explored for a long time. This is reminiscent of Western European caves, in which new traces of artistic activity were found over a hundred years of study. New geometric signs and fragments of drawings were discovered in Ignatievskaya Cave, previously not noted in archival materials and scientific publications.

It is possible to rearrange reports in time (stay tuned for updates)

The event will take place at the Arhe Cultural and Educational Center on October 28 (Saturday) from 11:00 to 18:30.

FREE ADMISSION! (by registration)
(Organization fee at your discretion).

There will also be a free live broadcast of the event (

It is known that over the fields where the “circles” appeared, small luminous balls similar to ball lightning were seen more than once. Based on the degree of damage to the nodes of the stems, Dr. Haselhoff, having carefully studied three "circles" in Denmark, not only proved that the heat radiation emanated from a single compact source, but also calculated that this source was exactly in the center of each "circle" . This is confirmed by a case in the Netherlands, when an eyewitness observed the appearance of a “circle”: he died in a matter of seconds after a ball of fire, similar to ball lightning, hovered over the field. Dr. Haselhoff studied the resulting circle and came to the conclusion that it perfectly confirmed his hypothesis. From Haselhoff's research we can conclude that anything more complex than a simple circle is a fake.

This opinion is not shared by scientists from the “BLT group”; They believe that most of the "circles" are formed not by high-energy plasma like ball lightning, but by low-energy plasma erupting from the upper atmosphere, which can take complex shapes and lay out beautiful images in the margins!

John Burke (the first letter of his last name begins the name of the group) published in

"MUFON UFO Journal" October 1998 article

"Physics of 'crop circles'. Is plasma the cause of their occurrence?"

We give its literal translation:

“In 1989, two books about “circles” were published, which for the first time brought to the attention of most Americans a previously unknown phenomenon: the appearance in fields of large geometrically shaped areas formed from cereals laid down at night. Professional biophysicist Dr. William Levengood wrote a letter to Pat Delgado, the author of one of these books. In it, he asked questions about biological studies of affected plants. Imagine Dr. Levengood's amazement when he learned that no one had ever carried out such studies! He asked for and, of course, received samples plants, taken in accordance with his instructions and packaged for shipment across the Atlantic. When glyphs (i.e., drawings in the margins - M.G.) began to be reported from the United States and other countries, Dr. Levengood began to receive samples from there - together with control samples taken for comparison from untouched areas of the same field.

Now, after a thorough study of samples from five countries and more than 300 glyphs, some of their characteristic patterns have been identified. Whatever the force that creates the glyphs, it physically changes the tissue of the fallen plants. We hypothesized that this force is plasma. None of the following signs arise when the glyphs were artificially arranged (either by us or by others) using all the technologies that those who admitted to forging them described. The stems often bend 90 degrees without breaking, as if something is softening them. This is especially noticeable in rapeseed; its tough stems cannot be bent without breaking. The nodes of the stems swell or stretch under the influence coming from within; sometimes it turns out to be so strong that the nodes explode, spilling cell sap.

This effect was observed among thousands of samples in 95-99% of cases; Dr. Levengood was able to reproduce it using microwave radiation. In addition, the affected stems have an electrical charge on their surface; we measured its size in circles that were only a few hours old. The degree to which the stems bent was proportional to the magnitude of the charge. This suggests that the force that caused the glyph to lie down was electrical. The electrical conductivity of the tissues of the bract surrounding the seeds turned out to be increased, which also indicates the induction of an electrical charge.

As scientists, we asked ourselves the following question: is there something in nature that can cause all these anomalies. The answer was yes. This is plasma - electrically charged air. Moving through a magnetic field (like the Earth's magnetic field, which is present everywhere on our planet), it twists into a spiral (the most characteristic arrangement of stems when lodging).

Secondly,

During rotation, it emits microwave (microwave) radiation!

The same principle is used in any microwave oven: electrons rotate around a magnet at the top and emit microwave radiation, which penetrates the tissue and heats it from the inside, interacting with the water contained in the food. The nodes, the most affected part of the glyph plants, are where the highest concentration of water is in the plant.

English meteorologist Terence Meaden first suspected that plasma was involved in the formation of glyphs. He suggested that in this case the plasma appears in the form of a downward vortex, formed under special weather conditions. Alas, the appearance of glyphs is clearly not dependent on weather, and secondly, his model does not explain non-circular glyphs. We wondered if there was some other source of plasma that could be involved in the appearance of the glyphs. This cannot be lightning - plasma with a very high energy saturation, the level of which is much higher than the energy involved in the formation of “circles”.

Suffice it to say that charring of plants never occurs in the glyphs. The ionosphere is a layer of low-energy plasma located 40 to 80 miles high in the atmosphere, where much of the air is electrified by solar wind and cosmic rays. When some of this plasma gains enough energy to begin to glow, we see the northern lights. For a long time it was believed that the ionosphere and the earth's surface were completely separate and could never touch. However, in recent years, dozens of observations by airline pilots have been confirmed by photographs of scientists capturing electrical discharges between thunderclouds at an altitude of 8 miles and the ionosphere (up to an altitude of 100 miles).

Some types of such discharges were called "elves". This is obviously a very common occurrence. The constant exchange of electrical charges between the ionosphere and thunderclouds covers 90% of the path to the earth's surface! We believe that sometimes this energy exchange can travel the remaining 10% of the way, reaching the ground.

Something similar is known to happen everywhere every night when the plasma makes part of this way down. Usually, when it hits the reflective layers of the ionosphere, it “bounces” back. These are the very layers from which short-wave radio transmissions are reflected when communicating over the horizon. At night, the reflective layers weaken and rise (which is why HF transmissions are received over a much greater distance at night). The reflective layers are weakest in the pre-dawn hours, when most glyphs appear. The ability of plasma to penetrate these layers is directly proportional to the speed of its rotation, that is, the more densely and the faster the plasma cloud rotates, the closer it can penetrate to the ground. The effect of "magnetic compression" causes the plasmoid to become increasingly compressed as it descends, increasing the speed of rotation (this is reminiscent of figure skating, when a spinning skater accelerates the rotation by pressing his arms to his body).

The number of ionospheric "ammunition" in the form of free electrons increases 100 times during sunspot maximum. The frequency of glyphs, at least in England, is roughly proportional to the number of sunspots. The large number of glyphs in 1988-89 corresponds to the most powerful sunspot maximum in all 170 years of recording. Since then, their numbers have been declining. Solar activity has an approximately 11-year cycle, so its next peak should occur at the turn of the millennium. The strongest evidence in favor of the ionosphere as the source of the plasma that forms the glyphs is the detection of microscopic particles of meteoric dust in 2/3 of the 32 "circles" from which we were able to obtain soil samples.

The largest concentration of them was discovered in 1993 in a single glyph from England, which appeared at night during the largest meteor shower over Europe in the last 30 years.

This example is the basis for our second article on glyphs in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Balls of pure iron oxide (magnetite), less than a millimeter in size, covered both the soil and the crops in this glyph. As a result of careful scientific research, it turned out that this material was identical to particles formed when meteors burn in the atmosphere; It takes 7-10 days before they settle on the ground. They can be collected with a magnet (as can the part of the wheat they penetrated).

Since then, they have been found in the majority of glyphs from the 13 states and 5 countries from which we obtained soil samples. Their quantity in the glyphs exceeded the normal concentration of meteoric dust in the soil by 20-100 times. When plasma rotates in a geomagnetic field, it creates its own magnetic field. It can attract and carry along any particles of magnetic dust encountered during the descent of plasma from the ionosphere. The ubiquitous presence of this material essentially eliminates all low-lying plasma sources. These are absolutely accurate and long-established scientific facts.

Nothing so far suggests that this hypothesis is in any way controversial, except for the idea that the plasma reaching the earth comes from the ionosphere. Plasma tends to bunch up in spirals; a third of the northern lights also self-organize into spirals. One type, the small spiral, seems to be the most suitable candidate for the "creators" of glyphs. Such a spiral is often only 400 m across when it begins to descend from the ionosphere, continuing to compress more and more as it descends. However, why are so many glyphs formed in one small area of ​​England, and how are some incredibly complex patterns formed? There are two different reasons at play here.

While trying to figure out why plasma was particularly attracted to one area 30 miles or so across, we ended up looking at a hydrogeological map of England and found something remarkable. It turned out that glyphs in the vast majority of cases appear above shallow chalk deposits. It is known that England contains the world's greatest chalk deposits (the white cliffs of Dover - cut through one of them). It also features some of the world's largest seasonal fluctuations in groundwater levels: differences in levels can be up to one hundred feet.

Is there anything in this that can attract plasma? Yes, I have. Water that seeps through any porous rock undergoes a process called adsorption. Electrons leave the water droplets passing through the pores, as a result of which the rock acquires a negative charge, and only a positive charge remains on the droplets passing through it. In calcium carbonate (the mineral that makes up chalk), a chemical process occurs when water dissolves part of the mineral and enhances this exchange of charges. Wherever this process occurs, in rock that can conduct electricity, the current creates its own magnetic field. We measured these ground currents and their associated alternating magnetic fields in 1993 near Silbury Hill, long the epicenter of the world's most intense glyph appearance.

Glyphs in southern England appear overwhelmingly where these electrically charged rocks come closest to the surface. The largest formations, as well as the greatest number of glyphs, appear in late summer, when the water table is at its lowest and more water is passing through thicker rock layers.

The appearance of large, dramatic "circles" began in the late 70s and early 80s, when excessive pumping significantly reduced groundwater levels. Years of drought are also record years for glyph appearances. In England, our group measured magnetic fields (which we expected to accompany similar electric currents) in one of the fields where glyphs appear almost every year. Four days later, a large 60-foot dumbbell-shaped formation appeared. Magnetometric measurements taken four days after its appearance showed that the magnetic fields and the currents that generated them had disappeared. It was similar to a “discharge” under the influence of a more powerful plasma - lightning. Earth currents attract plasma from the air; hitting the surface of the earth, it neutralizes its charge. Limestone is the chemical counterpart of chalk. This is also calcium carbonate, but much less porous than chalk. It also generates earth currents, but not to the same extent as chalk.

Surprisingly, glyphs are rarely formed over limestone deposits in England. There are no significant deposits of chalk in the United States, but there are large zones composed of limestone: in Florida, on the Eastern Coastal Plain, most of the Midwest and almost all of the Great Plains extending into Canada. These are all places where glyphs appear. As in England, they most often appear where an aquifer has been pinched out or where it has been cut by a river valley. Proximity to water is also typical of glyphs (not surprising, given the presence of currents generated by the interaction between rock and flowing water). Thus, the question of form remains - the most difficult to explain by natural causes.

The most common forms of glyphs are those that plasma most often takes on in a laboratory setting. It is important to note that plasma is scale invariant, i.e., everything that happens on the scale of inches can and should happen on the scale of miles or other sizes. Plasma in the laboratory most often self-organizes into a spiral - the most common type of lodging in cereals. The next most common type of plasma organization is a rotating disk surrounded by concentric rings (a shape called by experts “target” or “bull’s eye”). It is also the next most common form of glyphs appearing in margins. Further, concentric rings tend to alternate clockwise and counterclockwise rotation when crossed away from the center; the same can be seen from the fallen plants of the glyphs. Other shapes observed both in the plasma and in the fields include images resembling flowers, sets of sickles, dumbbells, etc.

The hardest thing to explain is how plasma can lay straight lines and make right angle turns. Somehow I can’t believe that air can form such shapes. However, plasma behaves more like an electromagnetic fluid (it is not for nothing that the physics of plasma motion is called “magnetohydrodynamics”). Although it is also counterintuitive that a liquid can create such shapes, this is not the case when the liquid is in an excited state. American scientists excited the liquid with sound waves, and figures appeared in ripples on its surface, including squares, triangles, polygons, etc. A glyph is most likely a two-dimensional trace from the passage of a three-dimensional body. The surface captures only a two-dimensional slice of a three-dimensional plasmoid, so even two-dimensional shapes in the plasma can be imprinted on the earth's surface. Deterministic chaos is a new branch of science that has repeatedly demonstrated that systems in a state of excitation or turbulence can take on unexpected geometric shapes.

Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that two-dimensional geometric shapes often form themselves in three-dimensional containers of liquid chemical reagents. A plasma clot pulled toward the earth by magnetic fields is likely a turbulent system. In this case, we can expect the spontaneous appearance of geometrically correct forms, even if only for a short time. If at this exact moment the plasma touches the ground, the corresponding glyph will be imprinted on the field. In addition, the influence of a “positive feedback” effect cannot be ruled out, which can lead to the “ennoblement” of certain forms until the ideal picture that we so often encounter is formed. Certain shapes, called waveguides, can be as attractive to plasma as honey is to bees. Rectangle is one such shape. This is the first reason why ball lightning (high-energy plasma) prefers to enter houses through a chimney, which is a rectangular tunnel. Another waveguide often used in industry is shaped like a dumbbell (this can also be often seen in the fields).

Another type of waveguide is the so-called Millman waveguide in the form of the letter "F" or "key": branches of this kind are often seen attached to glyphs. Plasma forms its own magnetic field lines. If, by chance, the magnetic field in a turbulent plasma takes the form of a waveguide, it can form a “positive feedback”. The part of the clot, vortex or cloud of plasma that has taken this shape will be attracted to more plasma, and it can be “ennobled” into an ideal shape. This hypothesis is currently highly controversial but stimulating, challenging one's imagination to think about how some of the more ingenious shapes could be formed through plasma physics.

For a long time, one question bothered us: if this is a natural phenomenon, then it should most often be of irregular shape. Nature doesn't make everything right. It turned out that in fact, most contacts of plasma with fields do not form a geometric lodging of plants. Of course, cereals around the world are constantly forced to lie down by non-plasma-related phenomena, such as wind. However, sometimes a closer examination of such chaotically laid areas reveals the same characteristic features as those of geometrically even glyphs. Laboratory analyzes of samples from such sites show many of the same tissue changes as in the glyphs. In fact, the most dramatic changes in stem nodes, including nodes torn by internal pressure, are found precisely in chaotically laid down areas. This is in accordance with plasma physics. It spontaneously self-organizes into a spiral form if its energy level is not too high. When this level exceeds a certain limit, the plasma's ability to self-organize ceases.

Studying photographs of glyphs very often shows areas of chaotically laid down grasses around them. However, our brains, fixated on geometric shapes, ignore them, and we believe that only a geometrically correct formation is the only “real” formation on the field. We believe that plasma (in whatever form) probably comes into contact with the earth more often than we realize. Obviously, if it touches streets or buildings, there are no visible marks left on them. A series of concentric tracks on the sand of one of the beaches had a very high level of ionization. A circle in the soil of a Colorado field had one of the highest concentrations of meteor dust we have ever seen. This dust was just inside the circle in the top three inches of soil. We believe that the plasma we study may turn out to be something like "elves" for science. Airline pilots had been telling about their existence for decades, but their stories were ignored by science until professional scientists took photographs of them.

Now that science has begun to study the "elves", it turns out that this is a very common phenomenon that can be observed wherever thunderstorms occur. We have one image taken during the day that shows what appears to be a small plasma vortex. Rare eyewitness accounts of the formation of glyphs also correspond to our model. Probably one day everyone will know about such things. in the meantime, we admire these amazing figures in the fields and puzzle over them... You can write to me at: USA, 20 Cyrus Pt. La., Bayville, NY 11709 or call: 516-628-3291" (Translation by Mikhail Gershtein). However, not everything is as simple as it first seems. Nancy Talbott (her last name gave the letter "T" to the BLT group) went much further and found clear relationships between "circles", UFO landings and the mysterious death of livestock! Apparently, the plasma laying the ears and grass can not only be natural, but also shimmer around the body of the UFO!

We present (with minor abbreviations) her article “Analysis of “crop circles,” published in the same “MUFON UFO Journal” No. 365 of September 1998: “Despite the fact that in some cases the phenomenon known as “crop circles” fields” was forged by hoaxers, scientific study of the affected plants and soil proves that more than 90% of the glyphs we studied have a different, more complex origin. The BLT research team (John Burke, William Levengood, and Nancy Talbott) has systematically studied plants and soil taken from glyphs in the United States, Canada, England, and several other countries since 1989, comparing them with control samples taken at specified distances from the glyph within the field , on which he appeared.

The results of these studies were published in scientific journals. In recent years, our team has expanded its research, discovering that many of the plant and soil anomalies found in glyphs are also present in UFO tracks and mysterious animal death sites. Several years ago, at the request of Linda Howe, Dr. Levengood took samples of wheat and grass for research from a pasture near Garnet, Kansas, a "cattle kill" site located 60 feet from an oval area of ​​fallen grass. There were many breaks in the nodes of the wheat stalks from the laid area. This effect shows that the pressure of the fluid contained in the nodes suddenly increased - so much that it literally exploded them from the inside. A significant anomaly was also detected during the growing of wheat seedlings taken from the center of the oval area. The height of these seedlings was 35.8% less compared to control specimens.

Similar anomalies are consistently found in glyph cereals. They suggest rapid heating, which may be caused by microwave (microwave) irradiation of plants or exposure to unusual electrical currents. Although it has been suggested that the circular patches of bent grass may be caused by downdrafts from a helicopter, Dr. Levengood is confident that the above-mentioned anomalies, as well as the significant elongation of stem nodes (which was also found in this case), are a sign electromagnetic radiation, probably microwave, emanating from the epicenter of the oval. When samples of grass from pasture taken near a dead animal were examined under a microscope and the results were compared with control samples, it turned out that the pits in the cell walls of plants located near the body were three times larger in diameter.

This phenomenon suggested the same rapid heating as that which affected the lodged wheat from the nearby oval site, and also that the two events (the death of the animal and the appearance of the glyph) may be interconnected. Since this incident in 1994, our team has sampled plants, soil, and the occasional unusual substance from dozens of unusual animal kill sites (Dr. Levengood prefers the term "killings") in the United States and Canada. Studies of the vegetation commonly found in such areas included a test that detected specific changes in the cellular respiration cycle - especially in mitochondria. When plants are exposed to increasing levels of radiation (in this case, microwaves), mitochondria often suffer irreversible damage that alters the respiration cycle. Time after time, we have found such damage in plant samples taken from slaughter sites.

Laboratory experiments with irradiation of control samples with commercially available microwave sources gave similar results. It is clear that in cases of livestock slaughter, microwave radiation or almost similar energy was involved. In addition, in recent years Dr. Levengood has conducted extensive research on soil samples taken from livestock slaughter sites. When glyphs were examined in soil samples taken from both outside and inside them, a significant increase in the amount of magnetic material mixed with the soil was detected. The same thing is found in places where livestock is slaughtered - sometimes in large quantities. In a 1997 case in Colorado, which was studied by Christopher O'Brien, while examining samples under a microscope, especially those taken near the head of a slaughtered animal, a large amount of magnetic dust was discovered - micron-sized balls. The number of such particles that in ordinary conditions fluctuates at 0.4 milligrams per gram of soil, here it was 284.3 mg per gram! The further away from the body the samples were taken, the fewer particles were found in them, clearly indicating some very unusual magnetic field associated with this incident .

Although we are primarily interested in glyph phenomena, we regularly receive requests to study plants, soil, and unusual substances associated with other anomalous phenomena. In 1995, the television program "Sightings", which was then investigating many stories of UFO traces, asked us to study samples from the sites of several ufological incidents in Israel. Soil samples taken after the Chiquemon incident in 1987 included a dark red, almost black, granular substance mixed with alumina. This substance had an extremely low melting point, beginning to bubble under the microscope's backlight and solidifying again into a black mass of rounded particles as soon as the backlight was turned off. In the absence of wider research, this substance remains a mystery. A white substance was found in the center of a glyph from Israel formed in 1994; the stems and leaves of the plants were covered with a layer of red substance.

Both materials were subjected to dispersive spectroscopy. She showed that the white crystals are pure silicon without the “growth lines” characteristic of silicon crystals grown thermochemically in the laboratory. The red material produces a high peak consistent with iron, but the presence of many other chemical elements makes it unclear what it is. Plant specimens from a glyph discovered near Kadima, Israel, in 1995 showed lesions consistent with prolonged local heating coupled with other changes consistent with energy effects on the plants. These were similar to lesions seen in many other glyphs. Over the past few years, we have examined numerous samples of strange substances associated with UFOs, as well as those found in glyphs and at slaughter sites.

Many of these substances turned out to be silicates, that is, based on silicon. Silicates are the most common compounds on Earth; nevertheless, their transformation into such unusual crystals is quite remarkable. There are no descriptions of such crystals in the scientific literature on crystallography! Early in his professional career, Dr. Levengood worked with silicate crystals for many years and immediately noticed the uniqueness of many samples. Their unusualness as such, combined with other oddities associated with their discovery and location, is of great interest. In addition to the pure silicon found in the Israeli circle (this case remains unique to this day), silicon with extremely unusual external shapes has been discovered more than once. The two most recent finds of this kind were in a 1997 glyph from Brummen (Netherlands) and in a distinct UFO trail from Israel (May 1998). An unusual form of soluble silicate was found in a 1994 glyph from Blaine, Minnesota; it may also be associated with UFOs.

More recently, two very unusual silicon-based substances were analyzed in connection with two separate kidnappings in the United States. Analysis of these and many other substances found in glyphs, UFO landing sites, slaughter sites and, as recently revealed, associated with abductions, is gradually building up a solid scientific database. The facts clearly indicate some similarity in the physical traces of the various incidents. This, in turn, indicates that their cause was something physically real, although completely unrecognized by traditional science. Control checks are an important aspect of scientific research. In the case of the glyphs, the question before us was: Could men armed with rollers, boards, or just their feet be responsible for the many thousands of circles that have been reported from around the world over the past 15 years or so?

Although logical reasoning argues against this conclusion, most of the media have held this opinion for many years. Agronomists and plant physiologists also suggest that excess fertilizer may be the cause of cereal lodging. Some very imaginative individuals have suspected that the glyphs may appear during the mating games of hedgehogs or due to mad jackals rolling on the ground. In an attempt to test the most reasonable of these ideas, our team conducted independent studies to examine whether people with boards and rollers could be the cause of the glyphs. We also examined the effect of 100 percent overfertilization in a test plot.

The results were quite clear: grains laid by hand using boards or rollers had none of the anomalies that our group had been discovering for many years. Plants placed by hand showed none of the typical damage observed in more than 90% of glyphs from different countries. In particular, the plants from the control glyphs made by people did not have changed stem nodes or breaks in them, stunted or ugly ears, as well as noticeable deviations from the norm during seed germination - lack of germination or growth abnormalities (its suppression, sudden increase in green mass or anomalies plant development). In unripe cereals, bending of the stems was noted within 3-5 days after they were laid by hand, but this has nothing to do with the energies responsible for the original glyphs. This type of bending is distinguishable from the damage to the stems that our group dealt with. A study examining the effects of overfertilization found the same results: it did not cause any of the characteristic damage that our team uses to identify genuine glyphs.

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It is interesting that although farmers have long believed that over-fertilization and bad weather are the reason for the appearance of patches of chaotically fallen wheat that are found every now and then in the fields, in our plot with a 100% excess of fertilizers not a single stalk was laid down. This is despite the fact that during the summer when the experiment was carried out, several strong thunderstorms broke out over it. We found out that the so-called “lodgings” (i.e., chaotically lodged cereals that do not form a clear geometric shape) are of the same nature as glyphs. Our group has conducted research on “lodging,” which can occur either on its own or in the same fields as glyphs. The same signs of energy effects were found in plants from lodgings. The main difference between them and the grasses of the glyphs was the intensity of the energy involved, with chaotically laid plants showing a higher level of influence and the changes produced by it than in more interesting-looking geometrically regular formations.

Of course, true "lodging" due to excess fertilizer (which causes excessive growth of the ear, bending the stem) and subsequent wind damage can and sometimes does occur, but such a cause is much less common than hitherto believed. Our group suspected that in cases of chaotic lodging of cereals, the energy responsible for the appearance of glyphs affected the stems much more often. A few final facts for the thoughtful reader to consider. As research has revealed, areas of standing plants found within many of the glyphs (as well as large areas of standing crops found outside these formations, up to 300 feet away) exhibit both changes in the respiration cycle and anomalies in germination of seeds.

These changes in standing plants (which outwardly appear completely intact) are often as strong or even more severe than in bent plants. This effect was found both on fields with glyphs and with “lodging”. Additionally, the increase in node length of plant stems was found to decrease proportionally with distance from the epicenter of the event, forming an almost perfect linear correlation. This is in excellent agreement with the Beer-Lambert principle, known from physics, which describes the absorption of electromagnetic energy by matter. Correlations consistent with this principle have been repeatedly found in samples of bent grasses from glyphs, and also (in the 1997 case in Salem, Oregon) in standing grasses on either side of the glyph. Finally, samples from the 1997 New York glyph, carefully taken by Larry Thomas, showed a significant linear correlation when examining the relationship between the amount of magnetic material in the soil and the distance from the glyph epicenter. This is one of the cases where UFOs were observed above or near the field where the glyph was subsequently discovered.

The distribution of particles of magnetic material is consistent with the assumption that they were influenced by centrifugal forces while suspended in a rotating plasma. The amount of these particles in the soil at slaughter sites also shows a linearly dependent decrease with distance from the body... We all know that the tired song about the “lack of reliable evidence” is just a sign of ignorance. In fact, there is a lot of “reliable evidence”, and over time there will be even more - just have time to deal with them” (Translation by M. Gerstein) Unfortunately, in our country they prefer not to deal with these secrets, but to organize meaningless and gross hoaxes.

Another version of how “circles” began to appear was sent by Sergei Podgorodnikov to the RU.UFO echo conference on September 1: “Espionage during the Cold War required advanced surveillance methods. In particular, secret satellites were launched by the CIA and the US Air Force These satellites were equipped with state-of-the-art equipment at the time - KH series cameras using special lenses and new types of films. To determine the scale of the photograph, corn fields of the US Midwest were used, which were mowed in a special way, and rather large geometric shapes were mowed down - so that could be recognized from space... As soon as the entire film was shot, it was catapulted to Earth in a ceramic container by parachute - in the area of ​​​​Hawaii.

These containers were picked up in the air by US Air Force C-119 aircraft (the so-called “Flying Boxcars”). Especially for this purpose, aircraft were equipped with long hooks attached to the tail. If the pilot missed and did not catch the container, the film ended up in the Pacific Ocean, where it could float for another couple of days. If within two days the US Navy did not find the container, under the influence of sea water the salt plugs dissolved and the container along with its contents was immersed in the ocean so that the enemy would not find it..." I can believe that the Americans painted images in the margins, but in those years they did not pose a mystery to anyone - the military probably applied them to the fields in the open and the farmers were properly paid for destroying the crops. Moreover, the phenomenon of "circles" can be traced back far into the past. Superstitious people in the Middle Ages attributed circles to "evil spirits" power," calling them "devil's spitting" or "fairy rings."

An English engraving from 1676 has survived, depicting a devil with a scythe; he was mowing a circle in someone's field, grinning maliciously. The folklore of other countries is also full of stories about the abuse of “evil spirits” over the harvest of good Christians. And in the middle of the 19th century, priest Robert Atherton sent his article “An Explanation of the So-Called Mysterious Circles” to the Chairman of the Royal Scientific Society, Lord Ross (it was in his honor that the sea in Antarctica was named). But the pundits did not even bother to publish it, although they mentioned it in the minutes of one of the meetings of the Royal Society.

From this protocol it is clear that Reverend Atherton was inclined to natural, meteorological explanations for the phenomenon of "circles". Apparently, the appearance of “crop circles” is caused by not one, but several reasons, and the result is almost the same: 1. The impact of ball lightning (or luminous spherical mini-UFOs, if you prefer, because “balls "I haven't been able to catch it yet.) 2. Impact of plasma descending from the ionosphere. 3. Impact of plasma surrounding an object hovering or landing on the field, or other impact from a UFO. 4. Counterfeits (what Komsomolskaya Pravda recently showed us). Until we learn to distinguish one from the other, no progress in the study of “circles” can be expected...

In the 1980s, about 500 circles and pictographs (symbols) were seen in fields of mature wheat in England. In 1986, Paul Fuller and Jenny Randles published the booklet "Riddles of Circles", sent copies to serious media outlets, and then organized a symposium in London. This moment should be considered the time of the birth of cereology - the science of circles.

T. Meaden put forward his theory based on the weather factor: circles are made by unknown atmospheric phenomena. K. Andrews and P. Delgado defended the idea of ​​​​the extraterrestrial origin of the circles. Fuller and Randles supported Meaden, but noted that some of the circles are fraudulent. Jan Mrzyglod exposed the falsifiers in the same 1986: one newspaper paid a certain farmer money to create a pictogram on his land. But this was nothing compared to the stream of fakes that poured in a little later: the British love hoaxes so much that when they don’t have them they come up with them.

According to Randles' files, the most significant blow to cereology came in September 1991, when two unemployed artists from Southampton, Bower and Chorley, admitted to falsifying the mysterious circles, and proved it with photographs. The artists explained their pranks with a desire to demonstrate the naivety of citizens and, if possible, become famous. Soon other confessions began to pour in, but most of the “circuit builders” turned out to be impostors. When checking, they could not create real circles, where even overripe and overdried wheat smoothly bent 90 degrees, but continued to grow as if nothing had happened (and on fakes, the fragile stem easily broke).

They tried to explain the appearance of the figures by various reasons - from meteorological (this was already mentioned above) to divine. Our Russian physicist A. Olkhovatov suggests that the circles are some form of energy exchange between the earth’s crust and the atmosphere, but it is not clear to him what exactly they exchange.

Possible causes included air vortices, micro-tornadoes, weddings with round dances of hedgehogs, acts of ghosts, and UFO landings. Eyewitnesses most often speak out in favor of the latter - ufological - version. Late travelers and night watchmen observed strange glows, and even the UFOs themselves in all their glory over the fields, where circles were discovered the next morning. In 1998, such an event occurred near the Krasnodar village of Nekrasovskaya, and in June 1999, the night appearance of a UFO over the site of the future circle was seen by residents of the Zorka farm.

The point of view of the Englishman Meaden, who considered electrified vortices responsible for the appearance of figures on the fields, received the greatest recognition. At least, all the RAS scientists I interviewed primarily talked about the Miden hypothesis. Perhaps because it is not as exotic as the hypotheses associated with aliens, universal intelligence and other concepts that are slippery for the mind. However, none of the current versions has been officially confirmed.

1999 was a record year for Russia in terms of the number of registered circles. Everyone has a Kuban trace. To the cases already cited above, we can add an oval formation measuring 25 x 17 m, which appeared in April in a barley field south of Novokubansk, a circle “opened” by drivers near the road between the villages of Leningradskaya and Konevskaya, a June circle with a diameter of 18.5 m southwest of Novokubansk, and even more same month, almost the same formation in the field at the 120th kilometer of the Armavir-Tikhoretsk highway. A purely visual examination of the circles showed: these are not fakes - clear boundaries and living curved stems - the first sign of authenticity - were evident. Results of instrumental studies: no anomalies in almost the entire spectrum of infrared, UV, microwave, X-ray and beta rays.

Interestingly, 1999 was a high-yield year for the appearance of circles on British soil as well. The most valuable for scientists are eyewitnesses not just to the presence of a pattern on the field, but to its appearance. So far, around the world there are about 50 cases of observations of circles forming without anyone’s intervention. Usually nothing supernatural happened - just the wind rushing over those places. But this is in England, but in Russia the appearance of circles was almost necessarily preceded by a UFO parade.

We all have an idea of ​​what happens in scientific laboratories and why scientists work in them. At least that's what we'd like to think. For example, they released a new medicine or developed an artificial prosthesis that is indistinguishable from the real one, discovered gravitational waves, and so on... But why do they go to different parts of the world every summer with huge backpacks and a bunch of equipment unknown to us, sometimes even at the risk of their lives? , with a minimum of comfort and a result incomprehensible to us?

5. Alexandra Petrunina,Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov

40 days in the Pacific Ocean. My experience of participating in the deep-sea expedition KURAMBIO II

“In 2016, a German-Russian deep-sea voyage took place to the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench area. Forty scientists from nine countries aboard the German R/V Sonne spent forty days collecting material from the ultra-abyssal depths of the Pacific Ocean to study the biodiversity of the region. We look forward to a fascinating story about the KURAMBIO II voyage and the results of our deep-sea research and the prospects for this area of ​​science.”

6. Dmitry Rogozin,RANEPA (candidate of sociological sciences, RANEPA field interviewer, one of the leading specialists in sociological research methods)

Who produces “public opinion”

“There are public professions, in plain sight. Bus driver, salesman, policeman. Everyone knows and talks about them. And there are invisible, unnoticeable ones. Take the sailors. Few people realize that every minute there are thousands of ships at sea. But if you want, you can see it. For example, there is such a map, MapAIS. On it are all the ships that are on the way, at a glance. Get a field interviewer. Who knows about him? Sometimes on TV it will flash: “according to the Levada Center” or “VTsIOM”. And hundreds of polling companies are completely invisible. We deal with public issues, while we ourselves are like spies, in the shadows. My speech is dedicated to the invisible, non-public profession of a field interviewer, creating public opinion.”

7. Alexey Kozlov,Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, National Research University Higher School of Economics (junior researcher at the Department of Typology and Areal Linguistics of the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences)

Chukotka incorporation. Field study of the languages ​​of small peoples of Russia

8. Alexander Agafonov,Institute of Oceanology named after. P.P. Shirshov RAS (researcher at the laboratory of marine mammals at the P. P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, specialist in acoustic specialization of marine mammals)

Why do sea hares whistle? White Sea coastal-sea expedition

You will find a story about an expedition whose goal was to audio record the underwater acoustic signals of sea hares (Erignatus barbatus) during the reproductive period. The 2017 work area is Unskaya Bay (Onega Bay of the White Sea). Why is this necessary? And what did the audio recording give to scientists? What new type of signals was discovered? You will hear about all this in the report of Alexander Agafonov.

9. Polina Volkova,Institute of Biology of Inland Waters named after. I.D. Papanin RAS

The country of winds and fogs. Botanical expedition to Medny Island

Medny Island is the second largest island of the Commander archipelago, which is located at the western tip of the Aleutian island arc, on the border between the Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The border position of Medny Island is the reason for the uniqueness of its flora, which includes both Kamchatka and North American species, many of which in Russia are found only on the Commanders. The distance from the mainland, difficult climatic conditions and the lack of settlements on Medny Island explain the insufficient knowledge of its unique flora.

The expedition to Medny Island lasted a month and a half (of which the participants spent six days on a yacht). As a result, many plant species were discovered that had not previously been recorded for the island or even for the entire archipelago (and one species was new to the flora of Russia). In addition, we assessed the state of populations of rare species, many of which are included in the Red Books of the Russian Federation and the Kamchatka Territory; this data is already being used to prepare new editions of these Red Books.

10. Vladislav Zhitenev,Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov (Doctor of Historical Sciences, head of the South Ural Archaeological Expedition of Moscow State University)

Secrets of Kapova and Ignatievskaya caves. Results of the South Ural archaeological expedition of Moscow State University

New drawings of primitive people were found by the South Ural archaeological expedition of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. Scientists and students explored the Kapova and Ignatievskaya caves, located in Bashkiria and the Chelyabinsk region, respectively. Rock paintings were discovered in Kapova Cave in 1959. These are the first Paleolithic paintings found anywhere other than the famous caves in France and Spain. They are approximately 17,000–19,000 years old.
Archaeologists work here every year. They described images of a woolly rhinoceros, a bison, a horse and, of course, a mammoth. In addition, there are figures of a fish, rarely found in Europe, and a certain creature that combines the features of a human and an animal. The main result of the season is the discovery of new drawings and their fragments in the cave, which has been explored for a long time. This is reminiscent of Western European caves, in which new traces of artistic activity were found over a hundred years of study.
New geometric signs and fragments of drawings were discovered in Ignatievskaya Cave, previously not noted in archival materials and scientific publications.

11. Ilya Gomyranov,Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov

Uzbekistan. The story of life in the desert

“Most of Uzbekistan is occupied by deserts, where the air temperature rises to 45 degrees, and the ground heats up even more. Hundreds of amazing animals and plants have learned to live among these extreme conditions. Many areas of the country are inaccessible due to lack of roads, water, and often due to strict access control regulations.

During our comprehensive Russian-Uzbek expedition, we traveled through most of the country, visiting remote and inaccessible regions such as the Ustyurt Plateau and the Nurata Mountains, and the route covered more than four thousand kilometers. The expedition members, professional zoologists and botanists, collected extensive biological material, compiling not only lists of species, but also describing the features of life. During the expedition, in addition to the collected material for museum collections, as well as lists of species for each group of living organisms, detailed photographs of animals in their natural habitat were taken, which will become an important element of scientific results.

Among the discovered species, we found several for the first time in the history of science on the territory of the country, and one of the salpugs was found for the second time since its description in Iran.”

12. G Rigory Tsidulko, Marine Mammal Council (IUCN expert. Consultant for the film "Born Free")

How many saber-toothed animals are there in the Arctic?

You will find a story about an expedition to study walruses in the Pacific part of the Arctic. A joint expedition of the KFTIG FEB RAS, the Marine Mammal Council and the Fish and Wildlife Service, with the participation of other institutes and organizations, took place in June 2017 and was part of a large joint five-year project to study one of the most amazing inhabitants of the Arctic - walruses. Over the course of a month, researchers from Russia and the United States traveled along the entire ice edge of the Pacific sector of the Arctic on the Russian scientific vessel Professor Moltunovsky. You will learn how scientific marine expeditions are organized and why this is done, what it is like to be a marine biologist and work in the Arctic.

Soda, lions, volcanoes and bacteria - the results of a comprehensive expedition to Tanzania

“For most people, wild trails are places that are as attractive as they are mysterious. For example, Kamchatka was once considered a regime territory, even though its area is twice the size of Britain. Most of the peninsula is occupied by volcanoes and mountain ranges, completely penetrated by glacial rivers. In Kamchatka there are only three small cities and several dozen villages; the rest of the area, in fact, is a kingdom of pristine nature. And in the midst of these wild lands, RAS researchers work. You will find a story about the specifics of such work, and live field diaries from the place of symbiosis between Science and Travel. Kamchatka, Iceland, Africa - all these regions have a place in our narrative.”

And that is not all! Stay tuned.

The conference will be held at the Arhe Cultural and Educational Center on October 28 (Saturday) from 11:00 to 18:30.

Admission is free, registration is required.

There will also be a free live broadcast of the event (

The history of cereology, a science that studies mysterious phenomena, has seen both fantastic finds and the greatest hoaxes. And often they walk side by side, hand in hand.

Cereology- a science that studies the appearance of crop circles (from the English word cereal - “cereal crops”). The official birthday of science is August 15, 1980, when an article in the Wiltshire Times newspaper reported that strange round patches of trampled oats were discovered in farmer John Scull's field in Wiltshire. Each circle was about 20 meters in diameter, and the oats were placed in them clockwise.

In the photo: Wiltshire County in the UK has long held the palm for the number of anomalous phenomena. These amazing circles appeared there in the summer of 2006 and, when summing up its results, were recognized as one of the most mysterious events.

From 1980 to 1987, about 100-120 circles appeared west of London. During this time, the phenomenon has undergone some changes. Along with the circles where the grains were laid clockwise, there were also those where the stems twisted in the opposite direction, and a number of circles had additional rings.

Throughout the 20th century, simple crop circles appeared all over the world, but at first they did not attract much attention except as crop owners were forced to count their losses. But in 1987, something changed dramatically. The circles are on the offensive! There were more and more of them, they “added” in size and their arrangement was constantly becoming more complicated.

At least 120 circles were recorded in 1988, the same number as had appeared in the previous eight years. The following year, this number almost tripled (305 messages) and tripled again by the summer of 1990. Soon crop circles became the number one topic for the British press. The British rushed into the countryside in droves, trampling everything in their path. And even the queen, during her vacation, read a book dedicated to the phenomenon. When journalists got wind of this, “Round Evidence” (that was the name of the publication) entered the bestseller list.

Regardless of whether they are fakes or not, circles in England have become a lucrative business, attracting tourists. Everyone wins here - travel companies organizing trips to the fields or flying over them in helicopters, farmers charging money from visitors, not to mention the sellers of souvenirs with “circular” symbols.

The phenomenon interested meteorologist Terence Meaden, who suggested that the circles appeared as a result of the formation of an electrically charged tornado or plasma vortex. Unlike ordinary tornadoes, which suck air from the surface of the earth and lift it upward, they are directed downward, narrowing accordingly. The vortices, sometimes surrounded by a ring of electrified air, descend and form circles in a matter of seconds. For tornadoes to occur, they require calm atmospheric conditions and undulating terrain, typical of Wiltshire and Wessex. Air masses flow over hills that obstruct air movement, and similar phenomena occur on their leeward side.

By the early 90s, circles could no longer be called “circles”; the fields were decorated with complex patterns of stripes and any geometric shapes.

In August 1981, in the neighboring county of Hampshire, three more circles were discovered, appearing not far from the highway, from where they were clearly visible. The circles in Wiltshire seemed randomly scattered, but these, on the contrary, were located in a straight line. In the center there was a circle with a diameter of 20 meters, and on the sides there were smaller ones - 7.5 meters in diameter. All this still fit into Meaden’s idea, and in the book “goddess of stones” it was developed. According to Meaden, ancient buildings located in those parts, like Stonehenge, were erected after the formation of plasma vortices.

Apparently, the ancient Britons considered circles sacred and therefore chose such places for buildings, burials or religious rituals. Alas, when Meaden’s book was published (this happened in 1991), the phenomenon of “circles” turned into who knows what. They could no longer be called “circles.” The fields were decorated with complex patterns of stripes and any geometric shapes. Such pictograms could not have appeared naturally: some intelligence had a hand in them. But whose - earthly or alien?!

Wheat samples taken from circles in Wiltshire produced strange seedlings when planted in the laboratory. Instead of one stem and one ear, each grain sprouted several shoots (up to six), on which, after the allotted time, ears ripened.

UFOs LEAVE TRACES

Ufologists are well aware that a UFO, descending above the ground or landing, can leave a round trace of crushed, torn out or damaged vegetation on it. Some UFO tracks were no different from the first, simplest English circles.

The mystery of crop circles is even more difficult to dismiss than the mystery of UFOs, since they appear regularly and are documented. At the same time, their unknown creator does not copy old designs, each time offering observers a new, original drawing.

For example, on January 19, 1966, Australian farmer George Pedley was driving a tractor through a field near the town of Tully in Queensland. Suddenly his attention was drawn to an object, which George identified as a "spaceship", which took off from a small swamp. “It rose vertically, spinning at a monstrous speed,” Pedley recalled. - Having reached a height of about 20 meters, the ship froze, dropped slightly, and then again sharply rushed upward in the north-west direction, gaining fantastic speed. After a few seconds he disappeared from sight." When Pedley approached the place from which the “ship” had risen, he saw a circle nine meters in diameter. Inside the circle, the reed stems were bent or broken so that they were below the surface of the water. “The reed was twisted, as if a monstrous rotational force was acting on it,” the man said.

At the UFO takeoff site, Fuhr discovered five round “bald spots” in which the rapeseed was pressed to the ground in a spiral.

And on September 1, 1974, near Langenburg in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, 36-year-old Edwin Fuhr, while harvesting rapeseed, noticed a metal dome located at a distance of 15 meters from him. Fur got out of the combine and moved towards the cone, but, approaching the strange object almost closely, the farmer noticed that it was “hanging in the air” at a distance of several centimeters from the ground and was rotating at a gigantic speed around its axis. After standing for a few minutes, undecided. Fur returned to the combine. Now he noticed four more similar objects hanging over the swamp. The next moment, all the objects suddenly flew into the air. At an altitude of about 60 meters, they froze for a moment, forming a “ladder,” then gray steam or smoke appeared from all of them, and they instantly disappeared behind the clouds.

At the take-off site, Fuhr discovered five round bald spots in which the rapeseed had been pressed to the ground in a spiral. “I looked for burns,” he said, “but there were none. The rapeseed was not broken, it was simply crushed and lying on the ground. Some plants were already starting to straighten up.”

These and other cases became known long before journalists told about John Scull's field. Such observations still occur today. However, the circles and other traces left by UFOs have a simple shape and do not in any way resemble pictograms. Many cereologists felt that it was necessary to look for a solution to the complex patterns in a different direction.

CIRCLES AND MEGALITHS

Astronomer Gerald Hawkins, who studied the pictograms on Salisbury Plain, came to the conclusion that the circles encrypted “brilliant, hitherto unknown theorems of geometry, not inferior in beauty to classical examples from ancient textbooks.” In the 60s of the 20th century, Hokeeps became famous for processing data about Stonehenge on a computer and proving that the cromlech was not only a religious building, but also an ancient observatory, precisely oriented to such important moments as, for example, sunrise during the equinox .

Priests, using cracks in stone monoliths and special holes, could even predict lunar and solar eclipses. Gerald did not find a direct connection between the pictograms and Stonehenge, but he admitted that the circles of the south of England were worthy of study in themselves: if they were made by hoaxers, there was a mathematical genius behind them.

EPIDEMIC OF "CIRCULAKING"

Aaron Gerald Hawkins, who studied the pictograms on Salisbury Plain, came to the conclusion that the circles encrypted “brilliant, hitherto unknown theorems of geometry, not inferior in beauty to classical examples from ancient textbooks.” In the 60s of the 20th century, Hokeeps became famous for processing data about Stonehenge on a computer and proving that the cromlech was not only a religious building, but also an ancient observatory, precisely oriented to such important moments as, for example, sunrise during the equinox . Priests, using cracks in stone monoliths and special holes, could even predict lunar and solar eclipses. Gerald did not find a direct connection between the pictograms and Stonehenge, but he admitted that the circles of the south of England were worthy of study in themselves: if they were made by hoaxers, there was a mathematical genius behind them.

It's no secret that DIY is a favorite pastime of jokers around the world. Even researchers who consider the circles to be traces of an unknown force admit that more than 80 percent of the studied formations are fiction.

The first clearly fake figure in England was registered in 1983. It was commissioned by several journalists. And in 1986, the hoaxers wrote on the field, disregarding the spaces, the words WEARENOTALOME - “We are not alone” with an inverted letter N. However, they did not take into account that the aliens would most likely have written “You are not alone.” However, the worst blow came in September 1991, when an interview with two pensioners, Douglas Bower and David Chorley, appeared in the Today newspaper. The old jokers admitted to being the author of about 250 of the most complex circles and drawings.

The hoaxers' career began in the summer of 1978, when they made the first elementary circle in Wiltshire. Bauer lived in Australia for several years and remembered the fuss surrounding UFO tracks. Due to the lack of cane, together with Chorley, he decided to do something similar in an ordinary field in southern England.

“When we drew the first circle we had a lot of fun,” Chorley recalled. - That was great. We decided to make a few more circles, but three whole years passed, and the damn newspapers didn’t mention a word about our work.” Finally, the press and public paid attention to

The efforts of hoaxers. Bauer and Chorley began to improve the "technology" and create increasingly complex figures, including a series of stylized insect designs that appeared in the fields in the summer of 1991. Pensioners often included their initials in the drawings - two letters D. In the end, they decided to confess, envying the resounding success of books about circles - they say, we are trying, and researchers are cutting coupons.

When the editors of the Today newspaper ordered a circle from Bauer and Chorley and invited cereologist Pat Delgado to give an opinion, he, after some doubts, declared the circle genuine. Needless to say, when Delgado learned about the hoax, he was very dejected.

Meaden triumphed: complex drawings that did not fit into his theory turned out to be fakes. The history of the phenomenon also worked in its favor: all the circles known before 1978, when Douglas and David began their “activities,” were simple. From the USSR and other countries where they did not have time to learn “circle-making”, only reports of elementary education came.

SIGN FROM ABOVE?

The situation changed again in the summer of 1996, when Salisbury Plain delivered a surprise. On the seventh of July, the most spectacular drawing that has ever appeared on the fields appeared in England. At 17.30, the pilot of a light aircraft took his passenger on a ride over Stonehenge, showing a panorama of ancient megaliths. They looked down with all their eyes and were ready to swear that there were no drawings there. Just 45 minutes later, a passenger, returning from the airfield by car and driving less than a kilometer from Stonehenge, saw a huge drawing in a field to the left of the road.

This time the picture consisted of 149 circles and circles, stretching over 300 meters. The largest circle exceeded 15 meters in diameter, and the smallest did not reach 40 centimeters.

The amazing thing was that the pattern was formed near the busy London-Exeter highway in broad daylight in a matter of minutes.

This drawing appeared next to Stonehenge in just 45 minutes. During this time, 149 circles of different sizes were created.

It was visible from Stonehenge, which was under strict 24-hour security, but no one noticed anything. The circles and circles that make up the drawing are not randomly located: each figure in relation to the other increases or decreases by the same amount. Even a whole brigade of “pranksters” would find it difficult to create this in a matter of minutes.

Terence Meaden, looking around the field, was speechless - it was obvious that one person could not create such a large and complex image. He estimated that between 30 and 100 people would have to work on it. Such a crowd could not go unnoticed either day or night.

If we put aside jokes and natural phenomena, it looks like someone, wanting to come into contact with humanity, is trying to communicate with us at “our level.” It is clear that until 1987 there was a “sighting”, and only then the contact program expanded to its full extent. Every year the pictograms become more and more complex, and who knows how it will end? However, there are assumptions about this as well. If we are still unable to answer or find something encrypted in the circles at a deeper level, “someone” will move on to other attempts to establish contact. The scientists themselves drew simple figures in the margins and received, as it were, “in response” new drawings, but for now this resembles a dialogue between a deaf and a dumb person. Will earthlings be able to comprehend the mind that draws in the margins? No answer yet.

19th-century projects on “how to make contact with Martians” involved “drawing” circles or other geometric shapes on the earth’s surface. The most fantastic ideas included digging huge trenches in the sands of the Sahara, which were subsequently proposed to be filled with kerosene and set on fire, or to cut clearings in the Siberian forests. The projects were forgotten when radio appeared - scientists began to look for signal

MADE IN RUSSIA

In Russia, the center of “circular creation” has become the southwestern part of the Krasnodar Territory, nicknamed by journalists the “Kuban Triangle”. The first circles that came to the attention of ufologists were noticed here in the early 80s near Tikhoretsk, but the circle that appeared in the summer of 1990 on the field of the Limansky collective farm in the Krasnodar Territory became especially famous. Brigadier Boris Malyavin spent the night not far from this place: “It all happened on the night of June 16-17. I woke up at about 8.30 am from some strong air movement. The noise came from the direction where in the morning my driver Anatoly Yurchenko and I saw a circle with a diameter of thirty meters. We entered it and saw tightly rolled ears of grain and a bunch of untouched wheat sticking out in the middle.” It was then that the local press, and then the whole of Russia, started talking about these circles.

Another unique phenomenon appeared in June 2004 on the outskirts of the village of Znamensky on the field of the Animal Husbandry Research Institute in the suburbs of Krasnodar

In April 1999, a mysterious oval 17 meters wide and 25 meters long appeared in a barley field near Novokubansk. In June, southwest of this city, truckers saw a circle with a diameter of 18.5 meters. The alpha radiation sensor in them showed an increased background. and the device for measuring electrostatic tension simply went off scale.

A month later, foreman Viktor Rastorguev from the Rossiya agricultural company discovered mysterious drawings on the field - circles and spirals connected by an arc and “rays”. The largest circle is 29.8 meters in diameter, the smaller circles are 9.8. But what struck the researchers most was the fact that the dosimeter showed a decrease in background radiation in the center of the picture.

That night, the village youth saw a strange glow over the field, flickering rays, and the fishermen heard an incomprehensible rumble. A resident of a nearby farm noticed a huge luminous body in the sky, similar to a funnel.

As time passed, the symbols on the Kuban fields began to become more complex. In the summer of 2003, a clear pattern was discovered in a grain field near the village of Tenginskaya, Ust-Labinsk region - four large parallelograms with “legs” and a funnel-like body.

As time passed, the symbols on the Kuban fields began to become more complex. In the summer of 2003, a clear pattern was discovered in a grain field near the village of Tenginskaya, Ust-Labinsk region - four large parallelograms with “legs” and the same number of small squares “drawn” by crushed ears of wheat. The signs were first noticed by pilots cultivating collective farm fields.

An even larger-scale drawing appeared in June 2004 on the outskirts of the village of Znamensky.

On the morning of June 14, people saw three circles connected by many lines, and then noticed that a few tens of meters from the first drawing two more formations were visible. Local resident Igor Ryazanov said that the previous night he noticed a mysterious object over the field: “We often see planes landing, shining spotlights. But the object seemed strange to me: it had too bright lights of ordinary white light. When they paid attention to him, after a while he simply moved away to the side, the lights died out, he turned into a dot and disappeared...”

Other witnesses saw lightning-like flashes in the sky, but did not pay much attention to them. But weather forecaster Lydia Kushnir confirmed that there were no thunderstorms then, the weather was clear and windless.

Semyon Protasov did not sleep almost all night: he had guests, they sat until late, and from time to time they went out to smoke on the porch. According to Semyon, in the evening he first saw strange flashes in the still bright sky. “These oddities with the weather happened until about two o’clock in the morning,” he recalled, “then everything calmed down. There were no cars or people in the field. And in the morning, when it was dawn, we saw “hieroglyphs” that had come from God knows where.”

ZONE PRINCIPLE

According to the Cosmopoisk research association, which studies anomalous phenomena, over 80 circles have been recorded in Russia and the USSR. Almost all of them are located in three lanes: in the south of the country, in the central part of Russia and north of Moscow. All three stripes are not parallel, and if they are continued in a western direction, they will intersect in the region of England, which is the epicenter of the gyre formation.

Most of the circles are located in the Krasnodar Territory, here they are geometrically strict and are located on the roadsides. The second band covers the Kursk, Voronezh and Volgograd regions. There are fewer circles here than in the south, but more than in the north of the country.

The “northern strip” includes circles discovered in the north of Vitebsk, north of Moscow and Tomsk regions. They are found mainly on forest edges, far from housing and roads.

"Discovery" No. 5 2009