The Curious Crop Circle Phenomenon

Mel Gibson made them famous in the blockbuster flick Signs and now, we’re delving a little deeper to uncover some of the mystery surrounding the phenomenon. Natural occurrence or alien intervention? No body’s 100% sure but one thing is for certain – they’ve been baffling farmers for centuries.

What are crop circles?

Put simply, crop circles are mysterious patterns that appear in fields at random. The patterns are created when certain areas of the crop are bent down while others a left untouched. The edges are so sharp and clean that it looks as though they’ve been manicured with a state of the art machine. While the stalks are bent to a fraction of their height, they’re not damaged. More often than not, the crop continues to grow as per usual.

What sorts of patterns appear?

Across the globe, crop circles appear in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they’re simple circles, other times they’re intricate designs made up of several geometric shapes.

When did they first appear?

While we’re only familiar with the modern day crop circles that appear in the news, the earliest reports date all the way back to the 1500s. 17^th century art depicts a devilish creature carving a crop circle into a field while in an 1880 issue of Nature journal, scientist John Rand Capron described a strange formation neat Surrey in England’s south. He was entirely stumped as to its origins, writing “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..." Reports were rare up until the 20^th century, when circles started to appear in the 60s, 70s and 80s. When a Wiltshire farmer discovered three 60 foot long spherical patterns the world was infatuated.

Aliens or Mother Nature?

So what causes crop circles? There are plenty of theories out there, with the most popular being that they’re the result of alien contact. Nobody’s quite sure why, however many are convinced that the circles are messages from outer space. Other theorists shun this belief and insist that the circles are a natural phenomenon. Some even put it down to paranormal activity, animals or magnetism.

If crop circles are due to magnetism, they aren’t the only phenomena being produced by the force. ‘Pulling Power! Magnetic Separation Supports Specific E. coli Isolation in Foodstuffs’ looks at how the technique of immunomagnetic separation has been hailed as the only procedure capable of specifically isolating E. coli in consumables.