In the August 2011 edition of Physics World, Richard Taylor, director of the Materials Science Institute at the University of Oregon, took on the subject of crop circles. Taylor suggested that crop-circle artists might be using GPS, lasers and microwaves to create elaborate crop-circle art.
No one can pinpoint the exact date that crop circles began to appear, but the documented cases of these huge patterns on Earth's surface – created by flattening a crop such as wheat, barley or rye – have substantially increased from the 1970s to current times. The patterns are also growing in complexity. According to Wikipedia, 26 countries reported some 10,000 crop circles in the last third of the 20th century. About 90% of those were located in southern England.
As the 21st century began, crop-circle designs have become more complex than ever. Some feature up to 2,000 different shapes. Mathematical analysis has revealed the use of construction lines, invisible to the eye, that govern pattern design, although exactly how crop circles are created remains mysterious. Stephen Hawking is quoted as saying that the patterns are either a hoax or are due to 'wind vortices'.
Here are some excerpts from the original article:
Construction Lines
Perhaps not surprisingly, most scientists have pre-
ferred to forgo stake-outs and instead analyse the pat-
terns left behind by these cunning artists. The
pioneering research published in 1996 in
Science News by Gerard Hawkins (who was then an
astronomer at Boston University, US) examined crop
circles formed during 1978–1988. The 25 formations
he analysed consisted of single circles, multiple circles
and circles with concentric rings. Yet even for these
primitive patterns, Hawkins found a hidden artistic lan-
guage: he discovered that all of the formations were
built using hidden “construction lines” that were used
at the design stage but did not appear in the final pat-
tern. Hawkins used these construction lines to demon-
strate that crop circles are much more than arbitrarily
sized and randomly positioned patterns in fields.
Instead, the construction lines dictate their relative
sizes and positions with precision and lead to some
highly exotic properties. In particular, ratios of various
diameters and areas within the designs were found to
cluster around the “diatonic ratios” for the white keys
on a piano. These ratios are the frequency ratios of
notes: “middle D” to C, for example, is 297/264 Hz =
9/8. The idea that crop formations possess a funda-
mental geometric harmony analogous to musical
chords has inspired musicians to use computer algo-
rithms to convert formations into melodies. The best-
known “translator” is Paul Vigay, and samples of his
music are available at http://bit.ly/lbUJQq.
Triple Julia
Even the preliminary stage of crop-circle construction
– mapping the proposed design – is not an easy task.
The appearance of the first Triple Julia formation in
July 1996 was pre-empted by a single Julia formation
several weeks earlier. This “warm-up” design took a
team of 11 surveyors five hours just to measure out, and
a surveying company later estimated that one of its
engineers would have required at least five days to map
out each of the three intertwining patterns. But once
their maps are complete, crop-circle artists face a still
more difficult problem: how do you imprint patterns in
crops that are a challenge even to draw on paper?
Traditional circle-makers employed “stompers”
(wooden planks attached to two hand-held ropes), string
and garden rollers, plus bar stools to allow artists to vault
over undisturbed crops. Despite their primitive appear-
ance, stompers are a surprisingly efficient tool for flat-
tening crops, especially when driven by skilled hands.
However, modern designs have evolved beyond the tra-
ditional requirement that stalks be flattened rather than
broken: formations now feature stalks that are carefully
sculpted to create intricate textures within the geome-
tries. For example, the stalks in each of the circles of the
Triple Julia pattern formed a spiral. Multiple layers of
bent stalks can also be woven together, creating shadowy
textures that evolve over days in the sunlight due to
the stalks’ phototropic responses.
Radiation damage
Independent studies published in 1999 and in 2001 reported evidence
consistent with what you would expect to see if the
crops had been exposed to radiation during the forma-
tion of patterns. The patterns studied date back to the
mid-1990s, and include the original Triple Julia.
Figure 5 shows the results of an investigation of “pul-
vini”, the visco-elastic joints that occur along wheat
stalks. Eltjo Haselhoff, a medical physicist, found that
pulvini on bent stalks within a 9 m-wide circle were
elongated compared with undamaged crops in the
same field. Although several well-understood factors
can cause pulvini to swell, including gravitropism (the
directional growth of stalks in response to gravity) and
“lodging” (bending of stalks caused by wind or rain
damage), Haselhoff dismissed them based on the mag-
nitude of the increase, and its symmetric fall-off from
the circle’s centre to its edge.
So let me make sure I have this straight. A highly organized, secretive cabal of mathematically brilliant performance artists spread out over the world but mostly located in England are coordinating in their use of GPS, lasers, and microwave emitters to heat and sculpt crop stalks in patterns so complex that surveyors, engineers, and physicists are baffled by the accomplishment. Night after night they do so with expert precision, carving on their canvas pictures that most would have difficulty reproducing on paper. The world's most brilliant physicists have seriously advanced 'the wind' as an alternative theory of these patterns' appearances. None of the artists have broken rank and come forward about their involvement with this even though they would be instantly famous for doing so. And this here purported conspiracy is what comes to light when Occam's Razor slices deftly through the mystery? Occam's Razor, the principle of simplicity, "don't make more assumptions than you have to?"
I don't doubt that a good number of these cases are hoaxes, but if even one of them isn't, then there's a troubling conversation that needs to take place.
Read the original article here: http://pages.uoregon.edu/msiuo/taylor/human_response/CropCircles%28physicsworld%29.pdf
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