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From C.Pike (K8J) WHODUNIT. First let me quote a brief summary of an article to be found in our local paper, The Salisbury Journal, dated July 11th. 1996. 'There has been another display of corn circles, this time in close proximity of Stonehenge. It is claimed that on the afternoon of July 7th, the farmer upon whose land the circles had been seen flew over the site in his light aircraft, and saw no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Approximately fifteen minutes after landing, he received a phonecall from a neighbouring farmer to alert him that people were trespassing in the forty-three acre field. Inspection revealed that many circles had been laid down; these were of varying sizes and extended over a considerable distance. To offset the loss of crops due to the invasion of many visitors, the farmer set up a scheme whereby a charge of two pounds was levied for close inspection of the manifestation. Our reporter was informed by devotees that the circles were in a pattern which they described as a fractal, this being an extension of the modern "chaos" theory. It is beyond the scope of this paper to comment on these claims.' An aerial photograph accompanied the article. Personal investigation was not difficult, the site being no more than four miles from my home. The ordnance survey readings are approximately S.U.103422. For those who know the A 3O3, it is on the opposite side to Stonehenge, and quite close to the road. Of course at the time of writing, harvesting has taken place, consequently all evidence has gone. I have come across the term 'fractal',(which is more than my dictionary has), and I did not link it to chaotic, just the reverse in fact. A description of the pattern is not a simple matter as far as I am concerned, one word keeps coming to mind, 'curlicue' and if that evades you, get a pencil and draw an ever increasing spiral of about one and a half turns; now starting at the centre of the spiral superimpose a series of circles, each one being smaller than the previous one. In the original layout the spiral consisted solely of the decreasing circles, without a base line it is difficult to construct the 'fractal'! There have been many and varied suggestions as to the reason or meaning of this 'whatever'. It is generally agreed that it is much too complex to be a hoax; there are a hundred and fifty-one individual circles, extending over a nine hundred foot longitudinal spread; the time factor would call for a large body of hoaxers working in unison like the clappers! So if it was not the work of humans how about the theory of atmospheric shenanigans; only after a good few pints of the hard stuff could I contemplate that, I have witnessed many a 'devil wind', occasionally two at the same time in a large valley, but 151 all spinning away together in perfect harmony: no way can I swallow that. At the risk of having everyone after my blood, let me suggest some extra-terrestrial agency. I hear you saying let's have something more concrete, that's a tall order, but let us assume that the said agency must be of a much higher intelligence than we, otherwise how can they operate at distances far greater than our astronauts. Accepting this fact it must follow that what to them is an elementary message, to us could be an imponderable enigma. Imagine being faced with the problem of trying to teach a chimpanzee algebra, actually the chimp and I would be on the same footing! Perhaps it's not a message as such but more a pictogram, once more we are back to square one; if it is a representation of something we have never seen, it's going to be awfully difficult to recognise it. I have toyed with thoughts such as, how would our local galaxy appear from a different view point, could this represent a time-lapse picture of earth, or how about this being a picture of E.T.'s home base? That's my ideas, how about yours, there's plenty of scope. Oh dear! D.A.N. is here again, actually what happened was, that to get him off my back I gave him pencil and paper with instructions to get cracking on his report. Here is a copy of his attempt, exactly as written with the exception of place names, which I have entered in upper case, to facilitate topographical searching. 'I went to see the curcles with Mr. Pike. i am only for feet tall so had to see the pitcher in the Journal. I think it was maid by a E.T wen nobody was looking. we have been lernt about maps at school and on salisbury plane there is for big hills. I think it is a pitcher of 151 flying sauces doing a circut round the hills. Starting at WESTBURY WHITE HORSE then on to CLEY HILL next OLD SARUM then BEACON HILL befor landing at BOSCOMBE DOWN air feeld.' C.P.again: Not bad for a ten year old, if you trace out the circuit he has chosen it gives a fairly good representation of the so-called fractal. I had thought to close this report at this point, but as any parent will tell you, there is no repressing a six year old girl. She had followed Dan into our house, and if he had something to tell about the corn circles, Amy intended to 'put in her six eggs'. Now Amy has an attractive lisp, and this is where she scores over me; I cannot commit her speech to paper, so here in my own words is her idea. ' I went with Mummy to watch the aeroplanes near Larkhill, and there were men jumping out with umbrellas and they looked just like the picture of the rings in the corn field'. C.P. Who could disagree with the statement "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings comes forth truth". Dan got back in again; if Amy could suggest parachutes, he reckoned that using some new fangled laser radar the imprint could have caused the circles, and that is from a nipper who has never heard of short wave skip or the heavyside layer!. Cheers from Skywatcher.