August 5, 2011 -- In this month's edition of Physics World,
Richard Taylor, director of the Materials Science Institute at
the University of Oregon, takes on a topic that his critics
might claim is beyond scientific understanding – crop circles.
Taylor suggests 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. 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