Ever since we humans have set our foot on this planet, we have been too busy unraveling the mysteries of the universe and are trying to quench our curiosity by finding the scope for a new discovery in every minute particle we find in nature. Yet, the more we try to resolve, the more intriguing mysteries fall in front of us. The appearance of Crop Circles is one such mystery that has been a subject of debate over years.
From Where did it all Begin?
The story of the Mowing Devil
Back in the year 1678, in the city of Hertfordshire in England, a wealthy farmer asks his poor neighbour to mow his field of oats but the two get into a tiff with one another and part their ways as they couldn’t reach an agreement on the price. Later the poor farmer felt that this argument could end up affecting his future jobs and then went after the wealthy farmer and expressed his change in opinion. To this, the wealthy farmer retorted back saying that a devil should be mowing his field before he allows the poor farmer to work in the field again. And the very next morning to his surprise, the wealthy farmer finds the entire field mowed. Neat circles were compassed over the entire area of one and a half acres. The farmer was amazed as the field was mowed with such perfection that every straw was laid with great accuracy and he believed that this would certainly be the work of a devil as no human would be able to achieve this feat in such a short span. This was an English folklore and this woodcut pamphlet is said to be one of the primary pieces of evidence for the appearance of the crop circles.
Tully Saucer Nests
On a foggy morning in the month of January 1966, George Pedley, a banana farmer near Tully in far North Queensland, Australia, heard a loud hissing sound as he was driving his tractor. He was about to step down from the tractor to check if something went wrong with its tyres and it is said that’s the moment when he saw a flying saucer passing over with great speed. As he went to investigate the place, he found a circular area of debris, and flattened reeds and grass assuming that it might have been created by an alien spacecraft. Some sources suggest that it might be the aftermath of any unusual weather condition and that it was more like a UFO report rather than a crop circle report.
Modern Day Crop Circles
The term Crop circle was first coined by Colin Andrews in the early 1980s. Though there were several reports of other crop circles in various parts of the world, the real crop circle, the one with complex and breathtaking designs did not appear until the 1970s. With each passing year, the number and complexity of the circles began increasing and it reached its peak by the mid-1980s and 1990s. Eventually, many people started believing that there was someone trying to reach out to us, trying to pass on messages to us in the form of crop circles.
That was until 1991 when two artists Dough Bower and Dave Chorley confessed that they had faked hundreds of crop circles inspired by the 1966 ‘Tully Nests’. What they used were simple tools that consisted of a plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in straight lines. They claimed to be responsible for creating over 200 crop circles from the period of 1978-1991. But there were 1000 others that weren’t created by them.
In the year 1996, a crop circle appeared across the highway near the world-famous Stonehenge monument in the countryside of Wiltshire, England which is regarded to be the world’s most spectacular crop circle with the astonishing fractal pattern. What makes the design more mysterious is that it was claimed that the circle appeared in less than an hour during the daytime. This pattern demonstrated pure intelligence hence becoming one of the most famous and important crop circles in history. People found it hard to believe that these intricate patterns were the work of any common man.
However, Richard Taylor, Director of Materials Science Institute at the University of Oregon, suggests that the crop circle artists today could possibly be using a GPS as well as microwaves and lasers to generate their patterns dispensing with the rope, planks of wood, and bar stools. Taylor suggests that microwaves could be used to make the crop stalks fall over and cool in a horizontal position. This technique could possibly explain the efficiency of the artists and the hidden details that some crop circles exhibit.
Scientists who are curious to study the mathematical fractals thought of two ways: they could stake out the rural pubs late at night with the hope of catching the artists, or they could apply pattern analysis techniques to the results. Most scientists preferred to go with analysing the patterns left behind.
Genard Hawkins, an astronomer at the Boston University, US examined the crop circles formed during the period of 1978-1988. He analysed 25 formations and it consisted of single circles, multiple circles, and circles with concentric rings. He found a hidden artistic language even for these primitive patterns. He discovered that all of the formations were built using hidden construction lines during the design stage but it did not reflect in the final pattern.
More recent crop circle designs are turning out to be more complex with up to 2000 individual shapes being arranged using intricate construction lines that will probably be invisible to a casual observer.
Other Speculations Related to Crop Circles
The Arecibo Answer
In the year 2001, a formation that appeared next to Chilbolton Observatory in Hampshire was speculated to have appeared as a reply to the signal popularly known as the Arecibo Message beamed to space way back in the year 1974.
Astronomers Frank Drake and Carl Sagan had sent a radio signal to the M-13 globular star cluster which is about 25000 light-years away from the Earth.
While the actual message contained information regarding the planets of our solar system, the formation of life on earth, chemical composition, structure and DNA of human beings, the reply was too perfect with carbon being replaced for silicon and the fictitious alien figure being swapped for the human figure in the Arecibo message. Well, this reply was proved to be a complete hoax, after all, why would the extraterrestrial beings bother to reply back through the crop circle when they could have just sent another radio signal??
But as the saying goes, ‘In an infinite universe, anything that can happen, will happen’. If so, there is a possibility for the existence of the extra-terrestrial life and we might receive a message from them one day in whatever form that would confirm their presence without much speculation. We never know what’s in store!!!
Reference:
Check out “The Giant Arecibo Observatory Telescope Collapsed; End of an Era“
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