The latest bout of crop circle activity has begun early this year, plus, TV sci-fi is back on the circles’ case again…


After last year, which began (in the UK, anyway) as late as May, the 2005 season has opened early, with five UK formations having appeared by the end of April, all in oilseed rape (canola), traditionally the first crop to mature.

The very first circular arrival of the year was actually at Hoeven in Holland, where two circles in grass were found on 6 April, but the first UK formation came along on 17 April. This was discovered at Ripley, near Bournemouth in Dorset and is rather intriguing in its design, resembling some kind of ratcheted spiral rendered in blocks. This was soon followed by others across the country, though at the time of writing, Wiltshire, the traditional heartland of the phenomenon, has yet to begin.

News on all these formations, and the others which will almost certainly follow throughout the coming months, can be found at:

www.cropcircleconnector.com

… and on other websites besides, which can be found by exploring our ‘Links’ section.

Here we go again.


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As an interesting aside, crop circles recently featured in a rather novel way in the newly-revived UK series ‘Captain Scarlet’, based on the old 1960s puppet sci-fi show. In a recently-aired episode of the new series (‘Circles of Doom’), now created using state-of-the-art computer animation, evil Captain Black, agent of the alien Mysterons, uses crop formations as bait to bring down aeroplanes by some mysterious force emanating from the designs. The sequences of the patterns being created are very beautiful in their execution, with Black pulling glowing floating shapes together from the air, pushing them into pictogram designs – as he does so, the resulting formation materialises for real in the field above his hidden base, crop flowing down in a gorgeous animation style. The episode will almost certainly become available on DVD/video before long, and, despite the inevitable dark-alien-plot slant, is worth seeing.