Kool Scatcat sent me this photo of actual crop circles.

Apparently, in parts of the US, crops are actually grown in circles to optimize irrigation. There is a single sprinkler in the center of each one.

UPDATE: Craig Kaplan wrote me the following note

Jim,

I wanted to pass on a couple of notes regarding crop circles…

First, I think that in the case of circular crops, it’s not that
there’s a big sprinkler in the middle, but that there’s a radial
sprinkler — a long line of sprinklers on a metal rod. The rod’s
on wheels and pivots around the centre of the circle, irrigating
a disc-shaped region. Given that the circles are about 1/4 mile
in diameter, I don’t think a big sprinkler in the middle would
do the job.

Second, I don’t know if this is on your list already, but in case
you haven’t seen it Andrew Glassner wrote a couple of columns
about crop circles in IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications. He
even designed a little programming language for describing crop
circles. Check this page for more information:

http://glassner.com/andrew/cg/cga/cga2004.htm

Boy, I sure sounded authoritative when I made that stuff up about the sprinkler in the middle, didn’t I? Don’t believe everything you read kids. The Glassner page is AWESOME, by the way. Check it out.

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