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and he proposed that the quintuplets could be caused by a vortex with 'minor' vortices held in orbit by a 'standing wave'. This allowed him to predict that systems with three, four and six-fold symmetry might be found as well as circles with arcs. Critics of his ideas had been quick to point out that, while the idea of vortices could be understood easily enough by reference to the effects visible around buildings when leaves and litter are seen spiralling, the motion of such events is upwards. Whatever was responsible for the circles was obviously a downward force. Meaden developed his idea to incorporate the idea of Vortex breakdown’, a stage in which the rotating air mass assumed an unstable spin, descended rapidly and A further feature of circles reports which any theory needed to take account of was the association of the circles with reports of light phenomena, and the final refinement to Meaden's ideas was a mechanism which could explain these eye-witness accounts. Again, it was known from observations of ‘dust devils’, that electrical fields can be generated in such structures and that they can emit sound and light. In such circumstances, the air may become electrically charged, or ionized. Such an ionized gas is known as a plasma. Meaden's idea now looked like this; a rising column of warm air could be given a rotation by air currents, typically in the lee of a hill and, as it rotated, gather an electrical charge, possibly causing sound and light to be emitted, dependent on the velocities involved. If the rotation became unstable the vortex, which would assume a spherical shape determined by surface tension between the charged air of the vortex and the surrounding stable air mass, could drop and be 'guided' down by electrostatic attraction from the oppositely charged crop below. He coined the term plasma vortex to describe this type of event. Unlike the meteorological theory, there is no single clear-cut 'supernatural' explanation for the circles. We can consider three main types of explanation under this heading: those associated with UFOs, theories based on ‘earth energies' and more spiritually inclined interpretations. UFO's One of the earliest accounts that we have of a circular ground trace is the 1966 case from Tully in Australia, referred to in Chapter 2. This event is known through UFO research and provides a clear connection between an anomalous aerial phenomenon and circular ground markings. The Warminster circle in 1972 was also associated with reports of UFOs and, consequently, it was inevitable that when close attention to the circles developed in the 1980s it was not long before UFOs were being advanced as an explanation. It is a short step from deducing that the crop has been flattened from above, and observing the generally circular shape, to assuming that a ‘flying saucer' has landed. The UFO community were enthusiastic reporters of the crop circle scene, with the long running British journal Flying Saucer Review regularly printing accounts of the latest circles. Researchers Andrews and Delgado and later George Wingfield were made 'consultants' to the journal. FSR has imprinted the crop. Supernatural Explanations