Mandala Formation near Barbury Castle, England

Easy as Pi: Astrophysicist Solves Riddle of Britain's Most Complex Crop Circle

By Daniel Bates
June 18, 2008

It is - by any calculation - a creation stunning in its ingenuity. Carved out in a barley field, this 150ft wide pattern is said to be a pictorial representation of the first ten digits of Pi, one of the most fundamental symbols in mathematics...

The ratcheting arcs starting at the center and proceeding outward express pi as increments of a circle divided into tenths, or 36 degrees. If you proceed outward from the center, the multiples of one tenth of a rotation (including the small circle as a decimal) are 3.141592654... as noted by astrophysicist Michael Reed...