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By Matilda Battersby Wednesday, 26 May 2010 The Wilton Windmill crop circle which appeared on Friday 21st May It is perhaps little known that the beautiful county of Wiltshire , famed for Stonehenge and the white horses carved into its hills, is the most active area for crop circles in the world, with nearly 70 appearing in its fields in 2009. It is unsurprising then, that the appearance of a phenomenally complex 300ft design carved into an expanse of rape seed on a Wiltshire hillside has caused excitement. But it's not just the eye-pleasing shape which has drawn attention to it. The intersected concentric pattern has been decoded by experts as a “tantalising approximation” of a mathematical formula called Euler’s Identity (e ^ ( i * Pi ) + 1 = 0), widely thought be the most beautiful and profound mathematical equation in the world. The design (pictured above) appeared beside Wilton Windmill late on Friday night. Lucy Pringle, a founder of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies, ...

Scientific analysis According to material published by Nancy Talbott's "BLT Research Team", anomalies found at some circle sites in England and the US are consistent with them having been created when localized columns of ionized air (dubbed plasma vortices/vortexes) form over standing crops. Talbott claims minuscule spheres of magnetic iron have also been found, distributed either around the perimeter of the circle or linearly, and that this suggests a very complex delivery system. Claims of bent or extended nodes in the stems of cereal grasses have also been made, allegedly suggesting that the crop has been subjected to a very rapid electromagnetic burst, causing the moisture inside the stems to expand, stretching or bending the nodes to almost three times their length. Talbott claims holes have been found in the nodes, suggesting a rapid microwave burst, causing the moisture to turn into steam, which then forces its way out, leaving expulsion cavities. In 2002, Dis...

Crop circle designs Early examples of crop circles were usually simple circular patterns of various sizes. After some years, more complex geometric patterns emerged. In addition to circle designs based on sacred geometry , some of the later formations, those occurring after 2000, are based on other principles, including fractals . Many crop circles now have fine intricate detail, regular symmetry and careful composition, and elements of three-dimensionality have been introduced. Crop circle maker John Lundberg, in an interview with Mark Pilkington, spoke about this change in crop circle designs: "I am rather envious of circlemakers in other countries. Expectations about the size and complexity of formations that appear in the UK are now very high, whereas the rather shabby looking Russian formation made the national news. Even Vasily Belchenko, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, was on site gushing about its origin: 'There is no doubt that it was not man ...

Crop circles are patterns created by the flattening of crops such as wheat , barley , rapeseed (also called "canola"), rye , corn , linseed , rice paddies and soy . The term was first used by paranormal researcher Colin Andrews to describe simple circles he was researching. While patterns involving complex geometries have been observed, the term circle has stuck as a generic term for crop patterns. Many circles are known to be man-made, such as those created by Doug Bower, Dave Chorley, and John Lundberg . Bower and Chorley started the crop circle phenomenon in 1978 and were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 1992 for their crop circle hoaxing. Various hypotheses have been offered to explain the formation of crop circles of unknown origin, ranging from the naturalistic to the paranormal . The main naturalistic explanation suggests that all crop circles are man-made, primarily as a hoax. Another naturalistic explanation is that they are caused by ball lightning . Paranorma...