Crop circle

A crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of acrop such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed.^[

In 1991, self-professed pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley stated that they had started the phenomenon in 1978 by making actual circles on crops with the use of simple tools However, crop patterns not only persisted, but became astonishingly complex. Some even came to resemble stereotypical extraterrestrials as portrayed by science fiction movies, fractals, and archaeological, religious, or mythological symbols, thus leading to speculation and passionate debate. Among others,paranormal enthusiasts, ufologists, and anomalistic investigators have offered arousing yet hypothetical explanations that have been criticized as pseudoscientific by skeptical groups like theCommittee for Skeptical Inquiry.^[

Some of the observed patterns have been revealed to be products of deception, artistic expression, and business or tourism^[9]interests. Some cases have been examined by a few researchers via the scientific method.

History

Bower and Chorley

1678 pamphlet on the "Mowing-Devil".

In 1991, two men from Southampton, England, announced that they had conceived the idea as a prank at a pub near Winchester, Hampshire. Inspired by the 1966 Tully Saucer Nests, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley made their crop circles using planks, rope, hats, and wire as their only tools: using a four-foot-long plank attached to a rope, they easily created circles eight feet in diameter. The two men were able to make a 40-foot (12 m) circle in 15 minutes.

The pair became frustrated when their work did not 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. Their designs were at first simple circles. When newspapers claimed that the circles could easily be explained by natural phenomena, Bower and Chorley made morecomplex 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. Later designs of crop circles became increasingly complicated.

Bower's wife had become suspicious of him, noticing high mileage in their car. Eventually, fearing that his wife suspected him of adultery, Bower confessed to her, and subsequently, he and Chorley informed a British national newspaper. Chorley died in 1996, and Doug Bower has made crop circles as recently as 2004. Bower has said that, had it not been for his wife's suspicions, he would have taken the secret to his deathbed, never revealing that it was ahoax.

In 2002, Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and astronautics graduate students from MIT to create crop circles of their own, aiming to duplicate some of the features claimed to distinguish "real" crop circles from the known fakes such as those created by Bower and Chorley. The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields.

Scientific American published an article by Matt Ridley, who started making crop circles in northern England in 1991. He wrote about how easy it is to develop techniques using simple tools that can easily fool later 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.

Art and business

Since the early 1990s the UK arts collective founded by artist John Lundberg, named the Circlemakers, have been creating some crop circles in the UK and around the world both as part of their art practice and for commercial clients.

On the night of July 11–12, 1992, a crop-circle making competition, for a prize of several thousand UK pounds (partly funded by the Arthur Koestler Foundation), was held inBerkshire. The winning entry was produced by three Westland Helicopters engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a trestle and a ladder. Another competitor used a small garden roller, a plank and some rope.

In a gathering in Switzerland, crop circle artists stated that: