Crop Circles

Two men with planks confessed. The formations kept getting more precise anyway.

Doug Bower and Dave Chorley confessed in 1991 with planks and string, and demonstrated on camera — case closed for the hoax majority, which is real and large. The residue argued by researchers (Levengood's papers in Physiologia Plantarum, disputed methodology): elongated plant nodes, expulsion cavities, meteoritic dust distribution — features plank pressure shouldn't produce. The formations' mathematical escalation through the 1990s (fractals, Euclidean theorems at Barbury Castle) either honors the hoaxers' craft or exceeds it. Connects ley lines (the Wessex circles cluster on the old alignments) and the general problem of phenomena that recruit their own counterfeiters.