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

The Daily Mail ^ | 18 June 2008 | Daniel Bates

[editor-surveyor]

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

Can't be aliens then; any fool knows that they only have three fingers.

[peeps36]

I saw a documentary where four guys made a huge crop circle in three or four hours. They used string and a flat board attached to a rope for their tools. It was amazing how fast they were able to flatten the crop with their wooden board.

[mirkwood]

[null and void]

Excellent! The Space Aliens think like Americans, period!

[james500]

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

As well as the use of ellipsis...

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Awesome!

[null and void]

But it isn’t an elipsis. It’s a visual representation that the numbers get smaller and smaller from here on, just like the circles get smaller...

[DollyCali]

interest bump

[Harold Shea]

Thats what I was thinking .

If I caught Alf vandalizing my wheat fields (don`t raise barley) there would be heck to pay.

[MeanWestTexan]

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

Yeah, or some other indicator should have been used by the hoaxsters. Pretty obvious fake.

Mrs. MWT is a archaelogists of the middle eastern variety. One of the best indicators of fakes is measurements that cleanly end in metric or English measurements -— e.g., the “ancient clay tablet” that happens to be 8.5 by 11 inches or the like.

Hint: If you are going to make a fake something and need some symetry, get a measuring rod, make a measurement system based on your own personal forearm, then half way through make another system based on your wife’s forearm and call it good.

[MeanWestTexan]

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

They just hope and feel that this is the work of an alien, so such must be the case.

[Tallguy]

The Plains of Nazca don't have anything on this stuff when it comes to sheer intricacy.

[SnakeDoctor]

Certainly looks like an ellipsis. The diagram even labels it as such.

H

[HereInTheHeartland]

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

Yes we do. But only during Earth missions.

[steve86]

Nice mathematical illustration but it pales in geometric intricacy to some of the others IMO.

[willgolfforfood]

Pi in base pi.......that is pretty funny.

If you have time to even THINK of stuff like that, you should have plenty of time to make crop circles.

[fanfan]

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

Certainly none of the Aliens you know personally, use decimal points.

I guess. ;-)

[balls]

The Brits and Irish use a period, not a comma.

[ModelBreaker]

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

It wouldn't be binary were it 16. It wouldn't be 16 were it binary.

[Tallguy]

Hint: If you are going to make a fake something and need some symetry, get a measuring rod, make a measurement system based on your own personal forearm, then half way through make another system based on your wife’s forearm and call it good.

...or you do what they've been doing in the Middle East for decades (if not longer). You take an actual, but common artifact, and you 'tweak'.