Photo by Hansueli Krapf.
Crop circles have been intriguing and fascinating ever since they were first reported, sparkling the immagination of many who believed they were a sign of alien communication.
Photo by I, Jabberocky.
They appeared in fields all across the world, fascinating, inciting, and sometimes scaring people from the US, Canada, the UK, France, Holland, even Romania.
Crop circle 2014 Sixpenny Handley.
The figures appear at night, being created far from any interfering eye. There have even been reports of “crop circles” in the Himalayan snow (though the name is a bit of a stretch in that case).
Photo by Ian Burt.
As anyone can see, the figures are complex, sometimes extremely complex, and are perfectly shaped.
Photo by johnantoni.
The size varies from a few meters to even more than a hundred meters in diameter. Crop circles are formed by flatting whatever plants are unfortunate enough to be in the field. Many of the crop formations (they are sometimes called like this, because not all are circular) are found nearby ancient monuments, such as the Stonehenge for example, which continues to fuel speculations about their extraterrestrial origin.
Out of all the formations in the world, almost 90% are located in south England, and out of those almost half were located within a 15 km radius from Averbury.As you might have guessed, today the whole thing is being marketed, and some companies even pay for crop circle advertising.
Another interesting phenomena was reported; some Australian wallabies have also been found to create crop circles, after consuming a part of an opiate-laden crop and then running in circles. They couldn’t have created structures so complex though.
Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now!
