Crop Circles from Outer Space?

Artist's conception of a UFO with a crop circle. (Copyright Lee Krystek 1996)

For over twenty years the southern English countryside has been the site of a strange phenomenon that has baffled observers and spawned countless news stories and not a few books. In the middle of the night, flattened circular depressions have appeared in fields of wheat, rye and other cereal crops. They range in diameter from ten feet to almost a hundred feet wide and vary from simple circles to complex spirals with rings and spurs. All have sharply defined edges.

The most striking feature of the circles is the frequency with which they occur. In 1990 over 700 crop-circles appeared in Britain.

People who attempt to study these circles have coined a name for themselves: cereologists. The word comes from the name of the Roman goddess of vegetation, Ceres. There are two favorite theories held by cereologists that think crop circles are the result of some not well understood physical phenomena. The first is that the depressions are the result of an unusual weather effect. George Tenence Meaden, a former professor of physics, calls this a "plasma vortex phenomenon" which he defines as "a spinning mass of air which has accumulated a significant fraction of electrically charged matter." According to Meaden the effect is similar to that of ball lightning, but larger and longer lasting.

The second theory is that somehow crop-circles are created by UFOs. Proponents of this theory note that occasionally crop circles seem to appear in conjunction with a UFO sighting.

Some of the early, simple crop circles certainly do suggest fields that might have been flattened by the weight of a grounded flying saucer. As the circles have become more complex in shape, though, proponents of the UFO theory have had to modify their ideas suggesting that the marks left are due to a strange effect of the craft's drive force on the plants. Others even argue that the shapes are messages purposefully left by the saucer's crew.

The most likely explanation for almost all of the crop circles is that they are hoaxes. Even the most ardent fans of either the weather or UFO theories admit that a significant fraction of the circles are man-made. One cereologist, a believer in the weather theory, Jenny Randles, wrote: "I would put the hoaxes to comprise something over 50 percent of the total."

Why don't these backers of the weather or UFO explanations believe that all the circles are hoaxed? Most would argue that a close examination of a circle will reveal differences between a hoaxed circle and a "genuine" circle. There is no clear criteria about what makes circles genuine or not, though. In fact the BBC asked one circle "expert" to examine a formation they had found. The expert declared it real, only to have to reverse his judgment when the BBC film crew told him they'd had the circle especially built for the occasion.

Some cereologists claim that the plants in hoaxed circles have broken stems while those in real circles are bent. It seems the bending is the result of the condition of the plant rather than the type of force used in flattening it. During the summer green, moist, wheat is easily bent and can only be broken with great difficulty.

So how do you hoax a crop circle? The tools are simple: A stake, a chain or rope, some boards, and a few people. The stake is pounded into the ground at the center of the soon-to-be circle and the rope attached to it. The rope is then stretched out and someone standing at the end marches around the stake to make a perimeter. The boards can then be used to easily flatten the plants within the circle. Rings can be made through the same technique simply by leaving some sections undamaged. (Warning: The above information is not meant to encourage anybody to trespass or vandalize. If you want to experiment with making a circle get the owner of the grounds permission before starting.)

Since nobody can tell the difference between a hoaxed and "genuine" circle, is there any reason not to believe that all of them are hoaxed? Probably not. Several factors argue in favor of the complete hoax theory. First, there is a lack of historical precedent for crop circles. Crop circles as they are seen today are a recent phenomenon only twenty or thirty years old. Secondly, the number and complexity of the circles have grown in proportion to the media coverage of them (suggesting that people are more apt to make circles if the circles get in the news). Finally, there are almost no credible reports of someone actually seeing a circle being made by either a UFO or weather phenomena (suggesting that the hoaxers are purposefully keeping out of sight).

Perhaps the mystery here is not what makes the circles, but what would cause so many other-wise normal people in southern Britain to make strange circles in the middle of the night in a farm field?

Correction: For a while we mis-identified the crop circle expert in the BBC incident as Colin Andrews. Our apologies to Mr. Andrews.

Copyright Lee Krystek 1996, 2000. All rights Reserved.