Crop circle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Crop circle
Unusual ground marking
A crop circle consisting of multiple circles
Details
Unusual ground marking:	Crop circle
Definition:	A Geometric or large abstract pattern formed by the flattening of crops
Signature:	1) Crops broken at the base and matted in a distinct pattern 2) Crops bent at node points and matted in a distinct pattern.[1][2][3][4][5]
Misc
Coined by:	The term was coined by researcher Colin Andrews in the early 80s and entered the Oxford Dictionary in 1997.
Related Term	Cerealogy: The Study of Crop circles
See Also:	Unusual ground marking

Crop circles are patterns created by the flattening of crops such as wheat, barley, rapeseed (also called "canola"), rye, corn, linseed and soy.

The term was first used by researcher Colin Andrews to describe simple circles he was researching. While patterns involving complex geometries have been observed, the term circle has stuck as a generic term crop patterns.

Many circles are known to be man-made,^[6][7][8] such as those created by Doug Bower, Dave Chorley, and John Lundberg.^[6][9] Bower and Chorley were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 1992 for their crop circle hoaxing.

Various hypotheses have been offered to explain the formation of crop circles of unknown origin, ranging from the naturalistic to the paranormal. The main naturalistic explanation is that all crop circles are man-made, primarily as a hoax. Paranormal explanations suggest that, while some crop circles are man-made, others are the product of alien spacecraft or supernatural processes.

[edit] History

The earliest recorded image resembling a crop circle is depicted in a 17th-century English woodcut called the "Mowing-Devil". The image depicts the devil with a scythe mowing (cutting)^[10] a circular design in a field of oats. The pamphlet containing the image states that the farmer, disgusted at the wage his mower was demanding for his work, insisted that he would rather have "the devil himself" perform the task. That night, the crop appeared as if it were on fire, then in the morning a circular pattern had mysteriously appeared.

1678 pamphlet on the "Mowing-Devil"

A more recent historical report of crop circles was republished (from Nature, volume 22, pp. 290–291, 29 July 1880) in the January 2000 issue of the Journal of Meteorology.^[11] It describes the 1880 investigations by amateur scientist John Rand Capron:

"The storms about this part of Western Surrey have been lately local and violent, and the effects produced in some instances curious. Visiting a neighbour's farm on Wednesday evening (21st), we found a field of standing wheat considerably knocked about, not as an entirety, but in patches forming, as viewed from a distance, circular spots....I could not trace locally any circumstances accounting for the peculiar forms of the patches in the field, nor indicating whether it was wind or rain, or both combined, which had caused them, beyond the general evidence everywhere of heavy rainfall. They were suggestive to me of some cyclonic wind action,..."^[12]

In 1966, one of the most famous accounts of UFO traces happened in the small town of Tully, Queensland, Australia. A sugarcane farmer said he witnessed a saucer-shaped craft rise 30 or 40 feet (12 m) up from a swamp and then fly away, and when he went to investigate the location where he thought the saucer had landed, he found the reeds intricately weaved in a clockwise fashion on top of the water.^{[citation needed]} The woven reeds could hold the weight of 10 men.

There are also many other anecdotal accounts of crop circles in Ufology literature that predate the modern crop circle phenomena, though some cases involve crops which were cut or burnt, rather than flattened.^[13][14]

Crop circles rose in prominence during the late 1970s as circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. The phenomenon of crop circles became widely known in the late 1980s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire and corresponding phenomena were reported from locations as diverse as Penrith in Australia and Minnesota in the United States. To date, approximately 12,000 crop circles have been discovered in sites across the world, from locations such as the former Soviet Union, the UK and Japan, as well as the U.S. and Canada. Skeptics note a correlation between crop circles, recent media coverage, and the absence of fencing and/or anti-trespassing legislation.^[15] However, proponents point to the simple profusion of these events prior to and continuing after the decline in media coverage as rendering the amateur crank phenomenon unlikely.

Although farmers have expressed concern at the damage caused to their crops, local response to the appearance of crop circles can often be enthusiastic, with locals taking advantage of the tourist potential of circles. Past responses have included bus or helicopter tours of circle sites, walking tours, t-shirts and book sales. Potential markets include curious tourists, scientists, crop circle researchers, and individuals seeking a spiritual experience by praying to and communing with spirits.^[16] Notably also, the crop generally continues to ripen in a 'genuine' circle, being laid flat rather than broken. Some researchers ^[17] have found that the corn appears to have bent at the nodes of the stalks, showing that can only be replicated in the lab using a microwave oven. In rarer cases, this has occurred near the top of the stems, not the bottom, all but ruling out human involvement ^[18].

In 1996, a circle appeared near Stonehenge, and the farmer set up a booth and charged a fee. He collected £30,000 in four weeks. The value of the crop had it been harvested was probably about £150.^[16]

[edit] Crop circle designs

Wheat pattern about 150 feet (46 m) in diameter with crop laid down in counterclockwise circles discovered on May 14, 2007, by Monroe County, Tennessee, Sheriff's Department Patrol Captain Bryan Graves while flying. First aerial photographs on Tuesday, May 22, 2007.

Early examples of crop circles were usually simple circular patterns of various sizes. After some years, more complex geometric patterns emerged. In addition to circle designs based on sacred geometry, some of the later formations, those occurring after 2000, are based on other principles, including fractals. Many crop circles now have fine intricate detail, regular symmetry and careful composition, and elements of three-dimensionality have been introduced.

Crop circle maker John Lundberg, in an interview with Mark Pilkington, spoke about this change in crop circle designs: "I am rather envious of circlemakers 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. Even Vasily Belchenko, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, was on site gushing about its origin: 'There is no doubt that it was not man made... an unknown object definitely landed there.' If the same formation appeared in the UK it would undoubtedly be virtually ignored by researchers and the media alike."^[19]

[edit] 2009 season

Often crop circle seasons begin with a few simple patterns. The 2009 season began with complex and numerous formations.^[20] The 2009 season also unusually began with six large formations in rapeseed. "The crop is tougher and more brittle than corn or barley."^[21] During May, June and July crop circles in the UK have pointed to the date July 7th 2009 hinting at solar activity. ^[22]

[edit] Creators of crop circles

A crop circle in the form of a double (six-sided) triskelion composed of circles

In 1991, two men from Southampton, England, announced that they had conceived the idea as a prank at a pub near Winchester, Hampshire, during an evening in 1976. Inspired by the 1966 Tully Saucer Nests,^[23] 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 more 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. Later designs of crop circles became increasingly complicated.

Bower's wife had become suspicious of him, noticing high levels of 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 a hoax.^[24]

Circlemakers.org, a group of crop circle makers founded by John Lundberg, 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.^[25]

A crop circle in Switzerland

Scientific American published an article by Matt Ridley,^[26] 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.^[19]

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 in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three 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, both then 17, were the first people to be legally charged with creating a crop circle. Takács and Dallos, of the St. Stephen Agricultural Technicum, a high school in Hungary specializing in agriculture, created a 36-meter diameter crop circle in a wheat field near Székesfehérvár, 43 miles (69 km) southwest of Budapest, on June 8, 1992. On September 3, they appeared on a Hungarian TV show and exposed the circle as a hoax, showing photos of the field before and after the circle was made. As a result, Aranykalász Co., the owners of the land, sued the youngsters for 630,000 HUF (approximately $3000 USD) in damages. The presiding judge ruled that the students were only responsible for the damage caused in the 36-meter diameter circle, amounting to about 6,000 HUF (approximately $30 USD), and that 99% of the damage to the crops was caused by the thousands of visitors that flocked to Székesfehérvár following the media's promotion of the circle. The fine was eventually paid by the TV show, as were the students' legal fees.

Not everybody accepts that circles are man-made, believing instead that many designs are too perfect and that they lack signs of human interaction. They also point out that it is highly unlikely that an international wave of highly covert amateur pranksters could have developed prior to the 1991 publicity gained by Bower and Chorley, and that this is far more likely to be a 'reverse prank', where credit is taken for an existing phenomenon and an explanation offered in order to garner media attention. The fact that crop circles were widely attested internationally by the late 1980s is thought to have caused the British men to devise a stunt. Among these critics was British-born astronomer Gerald Hawkins, who, prior to his death, argued that some circles displayed a level of complexity and accuracy that would be difficult to recreate on paper, let alone in a field after dark.^[19] In response, circle-creating groups and proponents of the man-made hypothesis state that it is possible to create a complex design by marking radii and angles with rope, and to enter and to move about a field using landscape features and tractor trails in order to avoid leaving other marks.^[27]

[edit] Scientific analysis

In 2002, Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and astronautics students from MIT to create crop circles of their own. Discovery's production team consulted with crop-circle researcher Nancy Talbott, who provided them with three attributes that she believed set "real" crop circles apart from known man-made circles, such as those created by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley.^[28] These criteria were:

1. Elongated apical plant stem nodes
2. Expulsion cavities in the plant stems
3. The presence of 10–50 micrometre diameter magnetized iron spheres in the soils, distributed linearly

Over the course of a single night, the team was able to create a stereotypical "man-made" circle that they then attempted to enhance using the three criteria. The team used lengths of rope to plot their design and trampled the wheat down in a spiral pattern using lengths of wooden board attached to loops of rope. To meet criterion 2, they constructed a portable microwave emitter, using it to superheat the moisture inside the corn stalks until it burst out as steam. To meet criterion 3, they built a device—dubbed the Flammenwerfer ("flamethrower")—that sprayed iron particles through a heated ring. However, the device proved to be too time-consuming to use, and they were forced to finish the task by 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". Their conclusion was later questioned by Talbott, who noted that the team had only been able to recreate two of the three criteria. Talbott also expressed concerns that the iron particles were not distributed laterally. Furthermore, she felt that the team's use of night-vision headsets and other technologically advanced items would be out of reach for the average hoaxer.^[28] This would have been even more so in the '70s and '80s when night-vision equipment was rare outside official use.

The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields.^[28]

[edit] Paranormal and alternative explanations

Since appearing in the media in the 1970s, crop circles have become the subject of various paranormal and fringe beliefs, ranging from the hypothesis that they are created by freak meteorological phenomena to the belief that they represent messages from extraterrestrials.^{[29][30][31][32]}

According to material published by the BLT institute, anomalies found at some circle sites in England and the US are consistent with them having been created when localized columns of ionized air (dubbed plasma vortices/vortexes) form over standing crops.^[32] Minuscule spheres of magnetic iron have also been found, distributed either around the perimeter of the circle or linearly, which suggests a very complex delivery system. [2] Bent or extended nodes in the stems of cereal grasses have also been found, suggesting that the crop has been subjected to a very rapid electromagnetic burst, causing the moisture inside the stems to expand, stretching or bending the nodes to almost three times their length. Holes have been found in the nodes, suggesting a rapid microwave burst, causing the moisture to turn into steam, which then forces its way out, leaving expulsion cavities. [3]

Other hypotheses attribute them to atmospheric phenomena, such as freak tornadoes or ball lightning.^[33]

The location of many crop circles near ancient sites such as Stonehenge, barrows, and chalk horses has led to many New Age belief systems incorporating crop circles, including the beliefs that they are formed in relation to ley lines and that they give off energy that can be detected through dowsing.^[4][32][34] New Age followers sometimes gather at crop-circle sites in order to meditate, or because they believe that they can use the circle in order to contact spirits.^[16]

UFOs and other lights in the sky have been reported in connection with many crop-circle sites, leading to them becoming associated with UFOs and aliens. Some people claim to have seen images of UFOs forming crop circles or overflying them, though photographs have been dismissed by skeptics as being indistinct or clear hoaxes.^{[4][30][32][33][35]}

[edit] Analysis

The main criticism of non-human creation of crop circles is that evidence of these origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is scant. Crop circles are sometimes explicable as the result of human pranksters. There have also been cases in which researchers declared crop circles to be "the real thing", only to be confronted soon after with the people who created the circle and documented the fraud (see above).^[36] Many others have demonstrated how complex crop circles are created.^[7][19][37]

The main criticism of human creation of crop circles is that Bower and Chorley could not have covertly travelled internationally and executed all if indeed any known circles prior to their claims in 1991, and that still-secret cells of hoaxers are very unlikely to have spontaneously and successfully joined the game. It is more likely that their "hoax" consisted merely of claiming to have begun the practice years earlier. All subsequent human circle creators derive from the 1991 publicity, and devote their efforts to maintaining the hoax, i.e. to proving the implausible proposition that Bower and Chorley created a world-wide plethora of crop circles in total secrecy. In hoaxer terms, this represents a classic success, an "I'm Brian" scenario.

In his 1997 book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan discussed alien-based theories of crop circle formation. Sagan concluded that no empirical evidence existed to link UFOs with crop circles. Specifically, that there were no credible cases of UFOs being observed creating a circle, yet there were many cases when it was known that human agents, such as Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, were responsible. ^[38] Circle creators Doug Bower and Dave Chorley concur.

In 1999, researcher Colin Andrews received funding from Laurence Rockefeller to conduct a two- year investigation into crop-circle hoaxing. Andrews put together a team that studied crop circles that had been commissioned by various media outlets and infiltrated several groups known to be creating man-made circles. Using these man-made circles as a base, Andrews went on to study data from circles found in England in 1999 and 2000. Andrews concluded that 80% of all circles studied showed "unassailable" signs of having been man-made, including post holes used to demarcate circle layouts or evidence of human tracks underlying the circle sites, but could not account for the remaining 20%, for which he was unable to find signs of human interaction.^[6] Andrews's figures have been disputed by CSICOP, who argue that Andrews's criteria for distinguishing between man-made circles and non-man-made circles were insufficient, as no official standard exists for determining the nature of a crop circle.^[39] Furthermore, these circles were in England, where the hoax is most operative.

In 2002, Freddy Silva published Secrets in the Fields (2002).^[40] He paraphrases Gerald Hawkins' summary: "If crop circles are made by hoaxers, then they should stop doing it, because they are breaking the law and damaging the food supply. If they are made by UFO aliens, they shouldn't give us back the dates of our trips to Mars and the names of the men from the Titanic era – famous, clever, but now forgotten. If some are transcendental, the power behind it should realize that our culture is not now willing to accept transcendental happenings. But if they are indeed transcendental, then society will have to make a big adjustment in the years ahead." (p. 299)

Critics have cited what they refer to as the "shyness factor". This alludes to the fact that no crop-circle makers have been caught in the act. This assertion is not true however, and there are cases of circle makers being apprehended, including one high-profile case in 1998 when a circle was made for the media and the makers interrupted when seen in the act. In most cases, it appears that the creation of crop circles is a nocturnal activity. Usually nothing is reported, and during one attempt to observe the creation of a crop circle, numerous individuals witnessed nothing out of the ordinary, yet were astounded to see a crop circle in the field only a short distance away from the one they had been watching the next morning.^[33] Crop circles known to have formed during daylight have not revealed the presence of hoaxers.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Similar phenomena

• Lawn Cross of Eisenberg an der Raab
• Unusual ground markings
• Nazca lines
• Fairy rings: An unrelated phenomenon where fungal circles are formed by a spreading mycelium. Older, larger fungal circles are not recognized when they have broken into arcs or patches. In Scandinavia and in Britain, the phenomenon of mushrooms or puffballs forming circles in a patch of meadow or pasture was referred to in folklore as "älvringar", "heksering", "pixie circles" or "elf circles" and was attributed by countryfolk to mystical forces. This phenomenon is commonplace and is recognized^[41] as the natural growth of fungus colonies.
• Crop marks: Variances in subsoil conditions can cause differences in the growth pattern of a crop that can appear from an aerial survey to be similar to crop circles. In 2009, investigation of such crop marks near Stonehenge led to the discovery of 6,000 year old tombs and other prehistoric subterranean structures.^[42]
• Ground Pictures

[edit] Advertising

Advertisement for Swedish Railways.

The UK-based artists Circlemakers.org have been asked to create numerous crop circles since the mid 1990s for movies, TV shows, music videos, adverts and PR stunts.^{[citation needed]} Clients to date have included Royal Bank of Scotland, Scope, Xbox, Disney, NBC, UKTV, Red Bull, Greenpeace, Microsoft, Nike, Shredded Wheat, AMD, Hello Kitty, Pepsi, Weetabix, BBC, The Sun, Mitsubishi, O2, Big Brother, National Geographic, NBC-TV, Orange Mobile, History Channel and the Discovery Channel.

New Age author Dan Joy in 1991 humorously 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] In popular culture

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (May 2009)

• In the NCIS Episode "Vanished," a United States Marine Corps helicopter is found in the middle of a crop circle.
• In an episode of Seinfeld, Jerry tries to pick up a woman in an elevator by claiming that he is responsible for crop circles.
• In the TV mini-series Taken by Steven Spielberg, crop circles are featured briefly, but although the series is about alien abduction, the crop circles are discovered to be a hoax.
• In the TV show Monster Garage, episode 45 featured a crew including abductee Travis Walton and crop-circle maker John Lundberg turning an old tractor into a crop circle making machine.
• In the film Chicken Little (2005), crop circles are created by aliens as they chase the main characters in a corn field.
• In the film Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), Harold and Kumar hang glide over a field with a crop-circle pattern in the shape of male genitalia.
• In the film Signs (2002), crop circles are attributed to the sinister motives of extraterrestrials.
• In the film Scary Movie 3 (2003), a spoof of Signs, Cindy has to investigate crop circles and prevent an alien invasion.
• In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a book written by J. K. Rowling for the charity Comic Relief, a creature called a mooncalf occasionally performs strange dances flattening crops in fields "to the confusion of many muggles".
• The film Mifune's Last Song (1999) apparently featured the first appearance of a crop circle in a fiction film.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Sandy's Rocket", SpongeBob makes a crop circle with his feet.
• In Justice League Unlimited, Huntress is seen reading one of Question's conspiracy theories about Girl Scouts being responsible for the crop circle phenomenon.
• "Crop Circle" is a track on Monster Magnet's Powertrip.
• In the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game booster set Power of the Duelist, there is a card called "Crop Circles", with the circle in the Egyptian Eye logo for Yu-Gi-Oh!.
• In the Invader Zim episode "Career Day", Dib and his mentor, a gullible paranormal investigator, approach a crop circle in a field. While the investigator concludes it is the work of aliens, Dib points out a cow rolling around the field, flattening the crops. To this, the investigator replies, "The cow is obviously being controlled by aliens."
• In the third level of The Simpsons Hit and Run video game, Bart's head is a crop circle.
• In the South Park episode "Cartman gets an Anal Probe", a crop circle of Eric Cartman is seen on TV in Cartman's house. Cartman remarks that the image looks, "...just like Tom Selleck."
• On the cover of Led Zeppelin Remasters, there is a photo of a crop circle.
• On the cover of Insane Clown Posse's The Calm is a crop circle as the group's logo. Track 4 on the album is called "Crop Circles".
• The Futurama episode "That's Lobstertainment!" opening subtitle reads "Deciphered From Crop Circles".
• In the film Phase IV (1974), the ants make pictogram crop-circle patterns in the desert.
• In the video game MLB 07: The Show, one of the minor league parks is called "Crop Circle Field".
• In the television show The X-Files episode "All Things", Mulder goes to England to investigate crop circles.
• In the video game "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots", a crop circle is hidden in Act 2.
• Crop Circle was the name of a surf-a-billy cow punk band from Kutztown, Pennsylvania.
• In the film Hating Alison Ashley, crop circles are used to satire her "unexplainable" family.
• An episode of the cartoon Backyardigans entitled "NewsFlash" involves crop circles in an Iowa cornfield.
• Crop Circles is the name of a conceptual Goa-trance project by Etnica/Pleiadians and Lotus Omega from the late 1990s.
• Crop Circle is also the name of a Peruvian progressive rock band.
• In the children/young teen television show Caitlin's Way, Caitlin and her rebellious boyfriend make a crop circle in a local family's field and Caitlin was later forced to work in their field as reimbursement for their destroyed crops.

[edit] Photographs of crop circles

Many excellent photographs of completed crop circles can be found on the Internet (see External links). Photographs of the process of crop-circle creation (perhaps using wooden boards and lengths of rope) also exist. However, there are very few photographs in which a recognizable crop circle from the gallery of completed circles is seen as a work in progress—for example, one-third complete or two-thirds complete.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• The Hypnotic Power of Crop Circles by Bert Janssen, ISBN 1-951882-34-7.
• Circular Evidence: Bloomsbury, London by Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado, 1989, ISBN 0-7475-0635-3.
• Crop Circles – Signs of Contact by Colin Andrews and Stephen Spignesi, ISBN 1-56414-674-X.
• The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles: Scientific Research and Urban Legends by Eltjo H. Haselhoff, ISBN 0-285-63625-1.
• Crop Circles by Lucy Pringle, 2004, Pitkin (an imprint of Jarrold Publishing) (largely in favour of the supernatural explanation of Crop Circles), ISBN 1-84165-138-9.
• The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making by Rob Irving and John Lundberg, edited by Mark Pilkington, 2006, Strange Attractor, ISBN 0-9548054-2-9.
• Secrets in the Fields: The Science and Mysticism of Crop Circles by Freddy Silva, 2002, ISBN 1-57174-322-7.
• Vital Signs: A Complete Guide to the Crop Circle Mystery and Why It is Not a Hoax by Andy Thomas and Mike Leigh, 2002, ISBN 1-58394-069-3.
• Round in Circles: Physicists, Poltergeists, Pranksters, and the Secret History of the Cropwatchers by Jim Schnabel, 1993, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-017952-6.
• Carl Sagan, 1996. The Demon-Haunted world: Science as a Candle in the Dark; "Aliens" pp 73ff.
• Noyes, Ralph (editor) The Crop Circle Enigma: Grounding the Phenomenon in Science, Culture and Metaphysics The Hollows, Wellow, Bath U.K.:1990 Gateway Books, ISBN 0-946551-66-9

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Crop circles

Database 

• Crop Circle Connector Up-to-date information on new crop circles as they appear throughout the season.
• Crop Circles and More Up-to-date crop circle information using Google Maps. Find the crop circles while they happen throughout the season.
• Crop Circle Archive A complete crop-circle database site with a search engine and Flash animations of crop-circle constructions using the "ruler and compass" rule.
• Crop Circles DataBase Spatiotemporal database using Google Maps.

Crop circle pictures 

• visiblesigns. Focusing on English and German crop circle pictures from 1997 - 2009.

Crop circles on google maps.

• See maps, kmz (Google Earth Community).

Scientific analysis

• Independent Crop Circle Researchers' Association Research conducted on crop circles in the United States of America.
• National Geographic News This is an introduction to crop circles with a special emphasis on their value as art.
• BLT Research Team INC. - crop circle research lead by Nancy Talbott.
• The Center for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a sceptical look at crop circles by Joe Nickel " Circular Reasoning: The 'Mystery' of Crop Circles and Their 'Orbs' of Light"
• A geographical study that asks if the location of crop circles near major roads and population centres is just a coincidence?
• Brief summary of scientific literature on causes of crop circles
• CROP CIRCLES: BASIC POSTULATES by Nataliya Anatolievna Solodovnik.

Circle creators and information on making your own crop circles

• Circlemakers: The most famous group of crop-circle makers, founded by Doug Bower, Dave Chorley and John Lundberg.
• http://www.amtsgym-sdbg.dk/as/crop/ufofake.HTM An entertaining report on how an elaborate crop circle made by astronomy students at Amtsgymnasiet in Sønderborg, Denmark fooled crop circle "researchers".
• How Stuff Works: Explains how crop circles are made and how to make your own, with step-by-step pictures and complex circle patterns.