Namibia's Fairy circles

[One-23 Profile]

Scientist uses satellites to examine circles in African desert



Zoom in on an area around 24 degrees south latitude and 15 degrees east longitude on Google Earth, and you'll find the spot where the dragon's breath has scorched the earth.

Grassland is pocked by orderly patches of bare ground, like a landscape of bizarre crop circles. But no teenage hoaxer would bother to come out to the remotest part of the Namibian desert to make these fairy circles, as they are known. The underground fire-breathing dragon is one of the many explanations for the thousands of bare patches, an ecological formation that has vexed experts for more than 30 years.

Now, a Florida scientist has harnessed the power of satellite surveillance to study the fairy circles over time - he's found that they actually appear, mature and die over decades. Whether this new information on the life cycle of the fairy circles can help pinpoint what causes them is still up in the air, however.
On the desert's edge

From southern Angola to northern South Africa, the fairy circles run in a broken belt that is 40 to 75 miles inland. To the east of red sand dunes, the fairy circles appear, 10 to 40 feet in diameter, never touching or overlapping, and remaining on the Namibian desert's edge. Some of the circles are ringed by tall bushman grass. The wind sweeps the circles into shallow bowls. Sandy soil and rainfall of between 1.9 and 3.9 inches per year define the fairy circle belt. And the ultimate cause for the fairy circles remains elusive.



"When something is that obvious, people's minds run wild and come up with all these ideas," said Walter Tschinkel of Florida State University, referring to the multitude of theories about the fairy circles' origins.

He has been visiting Namibia since 1970 and has just published the first systematic evidence that the fairy circles have a life cycle. The research was published Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE.

Since the early 1970s, a small band of researchers has entertained a variety of causes, but "it's hard to draw any firm conclusions; there's (only) bits and pieces," Tschinkel said.

"They still remain a mystery," botanist Gretel van Rooyen told New Scientist magazine in 2004, after her South African team had conducted tests on the three main theories and were left empty-handed.

Termites were first implicated - ranging from termites eating all the grass seeds, to the termite nests releasing noxious gases that obliterated the vegetation above. Van Rooyen and colleagues didn't find evidence of underground termite activity in the fairy circles they sampled.

So Tschinkel dug out some circles and placed rubber sheets under the sand. Two years later, the vegetation in the circles with the barrier had not grown back, discounting that rising fumes contributed to the barren areas.

Allelopathy - plants releasing toxins to suppress nearby competitors - has been one of the prevailing fairy circle theories. A relative of the poinsettia, Euphorbia damarana, was thought to contaminate the ground after it burned or died. If the soil itself is toxic as a result, then nothing should grow in it, even when it is taken from the desert to a lab. When van Rooyen and colleagues cultivated ryegrass in fairy circle soil samples, they didn't find any inhibition of plant growth. They further analyzed the soil for changes in pH or nutrients, even radioactivity, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
'Adopted' fairy circles

The continuing mystery of the fairy circles has made them a tourist destination. Visitors can "sponsor" fairy circles by donating to a local conservation foundation; a numbered plaque is placed in the circle, and the sponsor receives the GPS coordinates.



These "adopted" fairy circles were part of Tschinkel's new study. The circles were completely bare when they were sponsored; Tschinkel revisited 131 circles two to nine years later to confirm their status, and then used a mathematical model to estimate the circles' "life span." While most of the circles remained the same, a few had "died," or become revegetated. Based on these data, Tschinkel estimated that the average circle lived for 59 years.

A second aspect of the research used satellite images taken four years apart. Looking at hundreds of fairy circles over about 10 square miles, Tschinkel classified them as births (circles that were present in 2008 but not 2004), maturation (circles that acquired grass rings in the intervening period), stasis, growth (very few circles, as most are "born" in their final form), dying, or ghosts. Tschinkel again calculated life spans for the fairy circles. Larger circles tended to live longer, between 43 and 75 years, while smaller circles averaged 24 years. Interestingly, the size of fairy circles tended to decrease the farther south in Namibia one goes, perhaps reflecting changes in flora, land formations or water supply.

Source http://www.jsonline.com/news/usandworld ... 32425.html

[99socks Profile]

Not a fungus?

[One-23 Profile]

Could be Socks, never the less intersting

[Switchtrip Profile]

Quote "The underground fire-breathing dragon is one of the many explanations for the thousands of bare patches, an ecological formation that has vexed experts for more than 30 years."

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Dragons related to areas were nothing grows.

Its funny that they say about the dragons fire, there's an old English tale saying were dragons blood has spilt nothing grows, like Dragon hill were A bare patch of chalk upon which no grass will grow is purported to be where the dragon's blood spilled.

A little info on the spilt dragons blood tale


Dragon Hill is a small hillock immediately below the Uffington White Horse on the border of the civil parishes of Uffington and Woolstone in the English county of Oxfordshire. In 1974 it was transferred from Berkshire.
Dragon Hill is a natural chalk hill with an artificial flat-top (situated on the scarp slope of White Horse Hill), to which clings the legend that it was on its summit that Saint George slew the dragon. A bare patch of chalk upon which no grass will grow is purported to be where the dragon's blood spilled. It has been suggested as some sort of Iron Age ritual site associated with the nearby hill-figure.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Hill,_Uffington

Also u can see it in this vid.

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I read that too, what the man read, (I dont know if 2012 was mentioned though) years ago in the blue orbis unexplained books volumes 1-13 with the jigsaw pieces stamped into the front. there was another prediction for 911 in there some were im sure, i will try too find it for another thread, it might be in the remote viewing bit or prophecy.


But i would not rule out fairies myself, just saying about the dragon patches.