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"  How did you start studying crop circles?  I grew up in the 1980s in the U.K. when these started to appear and was naturally interested by them. But there was one specific night in 1996 when I was traveling around southern England, staying above a country pub. I awoke to noise of these guys talking outside, looking over this big sheet of paper. The next day there were photos of this amazing crop pattern that had appeared in a field just down the road. I wondered if these three guys [were responsible.] As a scientist I began to wonder how people actually do these things.  Sohow do people make crop circles? Well, the crudest way is to use a stomper, which is a plank of wood with a rope attached to both ends. People hold the two pieces of string and put the plank underneath their foot and knock over plants.  But ever since the explosion of crop circles in the last few decades, there are many patterns that are quite intricate and would be a challenge to carry out in a night with a stomper. In my article, I propose that people could be using portable microwave transmitters, called magnetrons, like ones that can be easily obtained from microwave ovens, to make crop circles. Past research has shown that it&amp;#039;s possible to knock over plants with microwaves, which superheat the stem, causing it to expand and the plant to fall over. [Editor&amp;#039;s note: One study found evidence that crops knocked down to create crop circles bore evidence of such heating.]  But I should emphasize that I don&amp;#039;t know if people are actually doing this. Part of the reason for publishing this article is that I think people are being very blas\u00E9 about crop circles. This is a major artistic movementone new crop circle appears every night on average around the world. Some of the patterns you see in them require a huge amount of science and math to design and carry out. And they contain mathematical properties that couldn&amp;#039;t have appeared by accident.  What sort of mathematical properties are we talking about? One recurring principle over the years since the early 1990s is fractals. Fractals take the same pattern and repeat it on smaller and smaller scales. It&amp;#039;s very clear there&amp;#039;s knowledge of science and math behind them.  How do you know some of these crop circles couldn&amp;#039;t contain these properties by accidentthat the artist could have unknowingly incorporated them?  This just isn&amp;#039;t possible with the more intricate designs. Let&amp;#039;s take the triple Julia set [pictured above]. You&amp;#039;d have to use the equation developed by Gaston Julia in 1918 to generate the Julia set, a very specific equation well known in mathematics.  What&amp;#039;s the most interesting pattern you&amp;#039;ve seen?  This exact one, the triple Julia set, which was actually created that very night I overhead the gentlemen in the south of England. That&amp;#039;s always my favorite. I also like recent patterns that are organic, like amazing pictures of jellyfish or insects, which contain intricate mathematical properties.  You said researchers have suggested plants within crop circles were knocked over by some form of microwave radiation. Where could the radiation be coming from?  There are two major factions that support different theories. The first group believes that these microwaves come from UFOs. The other group thinks that either the American government or an international consortium of secret agencies is behind itbeaming these waves down from space to test some sort of satellite technology.   Those theories require an awful lot of unproven assumptions to get to the endpoint explanation. What I did was go with simplest possible scenario to explain the facts at hand: that maybe these artists are using handheld microwave-emitting devices, which are easily obtainable, to create these patterns, as well as possibly using laser pointers and GPS to guide them. These would allow you to design something on the computer and carry it out in the field, which appears to be the case in some of these formations.  What&amp;#039;s your response to some of the wilder ideas about where crop circles come from? Many things are possible, but a basic starting point of science is to gravitate toward the explanation with the fewest assumptions. That&amp;#039;s a well-known principle called Occam&amp;#039;s Razor that all scientists use. The one I&amp;#039;m presentingof humans using microwavesinvolves the fewest assumptions. How does this relate to your other research?  My research involves how sight works. We develop chips to put in artificial retinas, which treat diseases that deteriorate the back of the eye. In designing that chip, we have to understand how the healthy human eye works. One of [the] main questions is: How do we view natural patterns? Some of our work with neuroscientists has revealed that certain patterns actually reduce stress levels, and we&amp;#039;ve also worked with artists and various art forms, which I consider crop circles to be.  How long have crop circles been around?  An awfully long time. The first reports of these are from 1600s. Even at that stage the designs were rather intricate. But it didn&amp;#039;t really take off until the late 1970s and 1980s in England. Two English guys later admitted to creating many of them with stompers. Walking home from the pub one night, one of the fellows, who was an artist, said to his friend, &amp;quot;Wouldn&amp;#039;t it be interesting if we fooled people into thinking that UFOs are landing in the crop fields?&amp;quot;  In some ways that was the beginning of the art movement and why even today the artists are so secretive. Art movements usually have various rules that have to followed. Still today people do their work at night and don&amp;#039;t talk about it. The movement is definitely fueled by this desire to convince people that what the [artists] are doing is so clever that it is beyond human capabilities and therefore must be the work of aliens to make something so intricate and unbelievable that people won&amp;#039;t believe it&amp;#039;s the work of humans And you can see it works on some people. I&amp;#039;ve read you receive some hate mail from people unhappy with your research. What&amp;#039;s that like?  It&amp;#039;s fine. When you stray into these areas, [you] expect that you&amp;#039;re going to deal with some of the fringe elements of society. There are also other people who never like when science moves in and explains an artworkthey feel there are certain things that should remain mysterious. But I actually think the more we find out what these people are doing in these crop fields, we will emphasize their talent and how skilled they are.   As for the pro-alien contingent, they can always go ahead if they want to and prove that aliens are doing this. I&amp;#039;m not hindering their research. I&amp;#039;m just offering a more straightforward and simple theory.  Have you had any contact with people who make (or claim to make) crop circles? Yes, some. There is actually a possibility that I might collaborate with crop circle artists in the future to test some of my hypotheses. It&amp;#039;s still unknown who is making some of the better crop circles. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a6808/the-math-and-science-behind-crop-circles/>