Crop circles continue to be in the news with some interesting new patterns appearing in England and other parts of Western Europe recently.
These mysterious formations are created due to flattening of crops such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed, both before and after harvest. And the designs have become increasingly complex over the years.
However, people are divided as to whether the forces behind them are man-made, natural, or even due to aliens.
Richard Taylor at the University of Oregon’s Materials Science Institute wrote about the science of crop circles in this month’s edition of Physics World, holding that the patterns are made by nocturnal artists, who could be using global positioning systems and lasers to achieve the detailed large-scale accuracy of the designs.
Taylor suggests this so-called crop circle art may also involve microwave devices to knock the stalks over rapidly and consistently into a horizontal position.
Matin Durrani, Editor of Physics World, supports Taylor’s attempts to explain these curious phenomena.
“It may seem odd for a physicist such as Taylor to be studying crop circles, but then he is merely trying to act like any good scientist—examining the evidence for the design and construction of crop circles without getting carried away by the side-show of UFOs, hoaxes and aliens,” Durrani said in a press release.
But in support of less scientific explanations, UFOs have been filmed near crop circles in the past, suggesting some sort of link and leading witnesses to believe that if the UFOs are not the cause of the phenomenon, then they at least appear to be attracted to the formations.
Meanwhile in Australia, it was recently suggested that wallabies influenced by cannabinoids are the creators of crop circles in Tasmanian poppy fields as they are allegedly affected by the opium when grazing.
Below are examples of some of the more unusually shaped formations from the last few weeks:
