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Crop Circles - patterns created by flattening of crops such as wheat, barley, etc- have evolved into complex geometries since 1990, and can be found throughout the world. Various theories abound to explain their formation from naturalistic to the paranormal.

Photo Alan L. Baughman

Naturalistic explanations include man-made hoaxes or geological anomalies, while paranormal theories are typically considered to be created by UFO’s.

Many are widely known to be made by man such as those created by Doug Bower, Dave Chorley, and John Lundberg. A 2000 study into circle hoaxing concluded that 80% of UK circles were definitely man-made.

Bower and Chorley were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 1992 for their crop circle hoaxing. One of the best known formations showed the image of a highly complex set of shapes known as The Julia Set, measuring 900 by 500 feet (150 meters) with 151 circles, 12 years ago on Windmill Hill near Yatesbury, Wiltshire on July 7 1996.

Most Complex Crop Circle Ever Discovered in Britain

The most complex “mind-boggling” crop circle ever to be discovered in Britain has been found earlier this month in a barley field in Wiltshire with a perfectly coded representation of pi to the 10th significant figure for the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, baffling mathematicians.

Crop Circle Wiltshire. Photo Apex Pictures

The crop circle measuring about 150 feet (46 meters) in diameter appeared in a field near Barbury Castle, an iron-age hill fort above Wroughton, Wilts.

“It shows a coded image representing the first ten digits of Pi - the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter.” - said Astrophysicist Michael Reed.

“The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up. The little dot near the centre is the decimal point. The code is based on 10 angular segments with the radial jumps being the indicator of each segment.”

“Starting at the centre and counting the number of one-tenth segments in each section contained by the change in radius clearly shows the values of the first 10 digits in the value of pi.”

“This is an astounding development — it is a seminal event.” said Lucy Pringle, a researcher of crop formations.

Top 10 Google Earth British Crop Circles

Recent crop circles such as the pi figure cut into a barley field in Wiltshire cannot be found on Google Earth, as they’re not real-time images, usually at least 6 months old. However, many of the circles created in the past can still be seen. Here are 10 of the most remarkable British formations found on Google Earth.

You can explore the following locations yourself by going to Google Earth or Google Maps, and discover the sights of the nearby fields.
http://earth.google.com/
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Crop circle West Somerton, Norfolk. Photo Telegraph

Crop circle Martham, Norfolk. Photo Telegraph

Crop circle Newbury, Berkshire. Photo Telegraph

Crop circle Near Barnsley, Yorkshire. Photo Telegraph

Crop circle West Meon, Hampshire. Photo Telegraph

Crop circle Hexton, Hertfordshire. Photo Telegraph

Crop circle Darfield, South Yorkshire. Photo Telegraph

Crop circle Broad Hinton, Wiltshire. Photo Telegraph

Crop circle Burwell, Lincolnshire. Photo Telegraph

Crop circle Colchester, Essex. Photo Telegraph

Crop Circle Designs

Early crop circles were typically simple circular patterns of various sizes, but more complex geometric patterns have emerged in recent years. From 1970 through 2000, formations generally appeared to be based on the principles of sacred geometry. But later formations seem to be based on other principles, natural sciences and mathematics designs, including fractals.

Crop Circle - Waylands Smithy. Oxfordshire 08/ 07/ 06 - Wheat. Photo Oddsocks

Many crop circles now feature intricate detail, regular symmetry, and careful composition. Elements of 3-D have come to be more frequent, and spectacular images of cube-shaped structures have recently been seen.

Once some of the creators made public admissions, crop circle activity soared, with new designs becoming ever-more complex. Today, formation designs have increased in complexity to the point where they’ve become an art form.

Crop circle maker John Lundberg spoke about this change in crop circle designs in an interview with Mark Pilkington, “I am rather envious of circle makers in other countries. Expectations about the size and complexity of formations that appear in the UK are now very high, whereas the rather shabby looking Russian formation made the national news.”

Advertisers using Crop Circles

UK based artists Circlemakers.org have been hired to create various crop circles since the mid 1990’s for movies, TV shows, music videos, adverts and PR stunts with clients including Royal Bank of Scotland, Red Bull, Greenpeace, Microsoft, Nike, Pepsi, Weetabix, BBC, Mitsubishi, Big Brother, National Geographic, NBC-TV, History Channel and the Discovery Channel.

New Age author Dan Joy in 1991 suggested that “crop circles are an advertising campaign displaying the logos of galaxy-wide corporations, preparing Earth for its forthcoming admission to the Galactic Federation of Planets.”

Paranormal and Fringe Beliefs

Since the 1970’s, crop circles have become the subject of many paranormal and fringe beliefs, ranging from theories of being created by freak meteorological phenomena to messages from extra terrestrials and trails of UFO landings.

Crop Circle - Savernake Forrest. Wiltshire 06/ 07/ 06 - Wheat. Photo Oddsocks

The BLT institute published papers stating that anomalies found at some circle sites in England and the U.S. are consistent with having been created when localized columns of ionized air –called plasma vortices/vortexes — form over standing crops. Other hypotheses credit formations to atmospheric phenomena such as freak tornadoes or ball lightning.

The location of many crop circles near ancient sites such as Stonehenge has led to many New Age belief systems such as being formed in relation to ley lines and that they give off energy that can be detected through dowsing. New Age followers have been known to gather at crop circle sites to meditate, and some believe they can use the circles to contact spirits.

UFO’s and other lights in the sky have been reported in connection with many crop circle sites, leading to them becoming associated with UFO’s and aliens. Some people claim to have seen UFO’s forming crop circles or overflying them, though photographs have been dismissed by skeptics as hoaxes.

Analysis of Crop Circles

The main criticism of non-human creation of crop circles is that evidence of these origins is scarce. Crop circles are often revealed to be the result of human pranksters. Numerous cases in which researchers declared crop circles to be “the real thing” have been exposed along with the people who created the circle and documented the fraud. Many others have demonstrated how complex crop circles are created.

Crop Circle Windmill Hill. Photo Oddsocks

Carl Sagan wrote in his book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, of alien-based theories of crop circle formation, concluding that no pragmatic evidence existed to link UFO’s with crop circles. Sagan stated there were no credible cases of UFO’s being observed creating a circle, but there are many cases known of human agents, such as Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, to be responsible. Circle creators Doug Bower and Dave Chorley agreed.

Researcher Colin Andrews conducted a 2-year investigation into crop circle hoaxing in 1999 and formed a team to study crop circles that had been commissioned by media outlets and infiltrated several groups known to be creating man-made circles.

Using man-made circles as a base, Andrews studied data from circles found in England in 1999 and 2000, concluding that 80% of all circles studied showed “unassailable” signs of having been man-made. Evidence included post holes used to demarcate circle layouts and human tracks underlying the circle sites, but he could not account for the remaining 20%.

There are cases of circle makers being caught in the act, including one high-profile case in 1998 when a circle was made for the media and the makers interrupted when seen creating them. Most crop circles are formed at night, so nothing is usually reported. During one attempt to observe the creation of a crop circle, numerous people witnessed nothing out of the ordinary, yet were amazed to see a crop circle in the field 500 yards away from the one they had been watching the next morning.

Discovery Channel commissioned 5 aeronautics and astronautics students from MIT to create crop circles in 2002. The team consulted with crop circle researcher Nancy Talbott, who provided them with attributes which she believed set “real” crop circles apart from known man-made circles such as those created by Doug and Dave.

Over the course of a single night the team was able to create a stereotypical “man-made” circle. Using lengths of rope to plot their design they trampled the wheat down in a spiral pattern with lengths of wooden board attached to loops of rope. They constructed a portable microwave emitter to heat the moisture inside the corn stalks until it burst out as steam. A device was built — dubbed the “Flammschmeisser” — which sprayed iron particles through a heated ring which became too time consuming, so they completed the task using a pyrotechnic charge to distribute the iron around the circle.

The circle was later analyzed by graduate students from MIT, who declared it to be “on a par with any of the documented cases,” which was later questioned by Talbott, noting that the team had not been able to recreate all criteria found in unexplainable circles and expressed concerns that the iron particles were not distributed laterally.

The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery channel documentary “Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields.”

Known Creators of Crop Circles

In 1991, 2 men from Southampton, England announced that they had conceived the idea as a prank at a pub one evening in 1976. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley made their crop circles using planks, rope, hats and wire as their only tools — with a 4-foot-long plank attached to a rope, they easily created circles 8 feet in diameter and were able to make a 40-foot (12 meter) circle in 15 minutes.

Southern Colorado as seen from FL380. Photo Global Jet

They became frustrated when their work didn’t receive significant publicity, so in 1981 they created a circle in Matterley Bowl, a natural amphitheatre just outside Winchester, Hampshire — an area surrounded by roads from which a clear view of the field is available to drivers passing by.

In the beginning their designs were simple circles, but when newspapers claimed they could be easily explained by natural phenomena, the pair made increasingly complex patterns. A simple wire with a loop hanging down from a cap — the loop positioned over one eye — could be used to focus on a landmark to aid in the creation of straight lines.

Bower’s wife became suspicious of him, noticing a lot of mileage in their car. Fearing that his wife suspected him of messing around with other women, Bower confessed to her, and he and Chorley informed a British national newspaper. Chorley died in 1996, and Doug Bower has made crop circles as recently as 2004. Bower said had it not been for his wife’s suspicions, he would have taken the secret to his deathbed, never revealing the hoax.

Circlemakers.org, a group of crop circle makers have demonstrated that making what self-appointed cereologist experts state are “unfakeable” crop circles is possible. On more than one occasion such cereologists have claimed that a crop circle was genuine when the people making the circle had previously been filmed making the circle.

Scientific American published an article by Matt Ridley — who started making crop circles in northern England in 1991 — about how easy it is to develop techniques using simple tools that can easily fool observers. He reported on “expert” sources such as the Wall Street Journal who had been easily fooled, and mused about why people want to believe supernatural explanations for phenomena that are not yet explained. Methods to create a crop circle are now well-documented on the Internet.

On the night of July 11 1992, a crop-circle making competition for a prize of several thousand UK pounds was held in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by 3 helicopter engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a trestle and a ladder. Another competitor used a small garden roller, a plank and some rope.

Gábor Takács and Róbert Dallos were the first to be legally charged with creating a crop circle. The students of the St. Stephen Agricultural Technicum school in Hungary specializing in agriculture created a 118 foot (36 meter) diameter crop circle in a wheat field near Székesfehérvár, 43 miles (69 kilometers) southwest of Budapest, on June 8 1992. On September 3rd they appeared on a Hungarian TV show and exposed the circle as a hoax showing photos of the field before and after.

Owners of the land sued them for approximately $3000 US in damages. A judge ruled that the students were only responsible for the damage caused in the 36-meter diameter circle, amounting to about $30 US and that 99% of the damage to the crops was caused by the thousands of visitors that flocked to Szekesfehervar following the media’s promotion of the circle. The students’ fine and legal fees were paid by the TV show.

History of Crop Circles

The earliest recorded image resembling a crop circle is depicted in a 17th century English woodcut called the Mowing-Devil, portraying the Devil with a scythe cutting a circular design in a field of oats.

Photo Knitgirl63

A historical report of crop circles was republished from Nature, volume 22 July 29 1880 in the January 2000 issue of the Journal of Meteorology describing the 1880 investigations by amateur scientist John Rand Capron.

One of the most famous accounts of UFO traces happened in the town of Tully, Queensland, Australia in 1966. A sugar cane farmer said he witnessed a saucer-shaped craft rise 30 or 40 feet (9 to 12 meters) up from a swamp and fly away. When he investigated the location where he thought the saucer had landed, he found the reeds intricately weaved in a clockwise manner on top of the water. The woven reeds could hold the weight of 10 men.

Crop circles became highly prominent in the late 1970’s when many circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. The phenomenon of crop circles became widely known in the late 1980’s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire.

In 1996 a circle appeared near Stonehenge, and the farmer set up a booth and charged a fee, collecting £30,000 in 4 weeks.

To date, approximately 12,000 crop circles have been discovered throughout the world, including the former Soviet Union, the UK, Japan, the U.S. and Canada.

Sources: Metro, Telegraph, and Wikipedia