Crops Circle

The sun sets on a field in southern England. When it rises again the following morning, that field has been transformed into an enormous work of art. A large section of the crop has been tamped into a pattern of circles, rings and other intricate geometric shapes. But who created it?

Are crop circles the work of alien visitors? Are they a natural phenomenon, created by electrically charged currents of air? Or are they elaborate hoaxes perpetrated by savvy, talented and very determined circlemakers? Believers and naysayers each have their own theories, but the truth remains elusive.

Crop Circle Image Gallery

Photo courtesy www.circlemakers.org Crop circle discovered at Alton Barnes in England in June 2004. See more pictures of crop circles.

In this article, we'll look into the phenomenon of crop circles -- what they are, where they can be found, how they are made (from the people who claim to create them), and how researchers are studying them in an effort to separate the supernatural from the scientific.

What are Crop Circle?

Crop circles are patterns that appear in fields. The pattern is created when certain areas of the crops are tamped down, but others are left intact. The edge is so clean that it looks like it was created with a machine. Even though the stalks are bent, they are not damaged. Most of the time, the crop continues to grow as normal.

Sometimes, the patterns are simple circles. In other instances, they are elaborate designs consisting of several interconnecting geometric shapes.

Photo courtesy www.circlemakers.org This "optical labyrinth" formation, located near Savernake Forest in Wiltshire, consists of 180 separate standing and flattened elements and is approximately 200 feet (60 meters) across.

Farmers have reported finding strange circles in their fields for centuries. The earliest mention of a crop circle dates back to the 1500s. A 17th-century English woodcut shows a devilish creature making a crop circle. People who lived in the area called the creature the "mowing devil."

In an 1880 issue of the journal Nature, amateur scientist John Rand Capron reported on a formation near Guildford, Surrey, in the south of England. He described his finding as "a field of standing wheat considerably knocked about, not as an entirety, but in patches forming, as viewed from a distance, circular spots." He went on to say, "... I could not trace locally any circumstances accounting for the peculiar forms of the patches in the field ... They were suggestive to me of some cyclonic wind action ..."

Mentions of crop circles were sporadic until the 20th century, when circles began appearing in the 1960s and '70s in England and the United States. But the phenomenon didn't gain attention until 1980, when a farmer in Wiltshire County, England, discovered three circles, each about 60 feet (18 meters) across, in his oat crops. UFO researchers and media descended on the farm, and the world first began to learn about crop circles.

By the 1990s, crop circles had become something of a tourist attraction. In 1990 alone, more than 500 circles emerged in Europe. Within the next few years, there were thousands. Visitors came from around the world to see them. Some farmers even charged admission to their mysterious attractions.

Who Makes Crop Circles?

UFOs and Aliens
Possibly the most controversial theory is that crop circles are the work of visitors from other planets -- sort of like alien calling cards.

People who agree with this theory say that the circles are either the imprint left by landing spacecraft or messages brought from afar for us earthlings. Some eyewitnesses claim to have seen UFO-like lights and strange noises emanating from crop circle sites.