Easy as pi: Astrophysicist solves riddle of Britain's most complex crop circle

The Daily Mail ^ | 18 June 2008 | Daniel Bates

[Little Ray]

Darn that’s good!

[Incorrigible]

I wish I had so much time on my hands....

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

My first two thoughts:

1) Absolutely rocking!
2) Waaaaay too much time on their hands (aliens or human)

[BGHater]

First thoughts.

Uno.

[bolobaby]

Assumes a base 10 numbering system, of course...

[Poser]

Smart fellow... Or... He makes crop circles.

[TexasCajun]

The Holligans won't be happy with the crop they picked to destroy.

Mind your Ps & Qs boyz!

[DManA]

Thanks aliens but we figured that out 2000 years ago. We would like to know what makes those saucers go so fast though.

[NonValueAdded]

"At the end of Contact, the novel, a supercomputer programmed by Ellie to calculate the number "pi" to the "zillionth" place begins to sound alarm because it finds a new "message" hidden within the number itself - a feat that only an intelligence capable of altering or redefining the structure of the universe itself could do."

So ... do we have art imitating art or [extraterrestrial] life imitating art?

And when do we discover something else in the signal?

and what a waste of barley.

[evets]

"To Serve Man"

[MarkeyD]

They should have left off the decimal point. Aliens don’t use decimal points.

[Redbob]

"...the crop pattern 'clearly shows' the first ten digits of pi, which - as many will remember from their schooldays - is used to calculate the area of a circle using the formula Pi r squared."

Wrongo, bwana:
Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its' diameter. While it can also be used in other calculations, this is its' fundamental property.

[Da Coyote]

Hope you have around 20 or more pages and diagrams so that obama supporters can catch on.

[DannyTN]

Of course, this stongly implies that the aliens have 10 fingers. And amazingly, like humans, they use a period to denote whole vs fractional numbers.

[ml/nj]

I guess the aliens weren't smart enough to employ some binary number base like 16.

ML/NJ

[Glenmerle]

Where's the staggered edge between 8 and 9 o'clock?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

If I were a British farmer, there would be dead crop-circle fraudsters buried on my property if they damaged my crop like that.

[LukeL]

That is expressed as i

If you don't get the joke i is used to represent an imaginary number.

[Calvin Locke]

My first thought, too.