(Updated: This was later revealed as a PR stunt.) A "very detailed" and "quite beautiful" crop circle drew hundreds of curiosity seekers to a farm outside the small town of Chualar, Calif., this week for a fleeting look at the crop circle, which was mowed down Tuesday. Word of the crop circle emerged Monday, via this YouTube video and after a photographer happened to fly over Scott Anthony's farm in a helicopter, KSBW reports, and it drew all the usual alien invasion theories. What was it? The number 192, repeated in Braille in an intricate circular design, says a crop circle enthusiast and certified Braille transcriber. "It looks like a ticker tape of the number 192, 192, 192."
What does it mean? Some think it's a reference to the fact that 192 is found in IP addresses; Chualar is close to the Silicon Valley. As for how it got there, Anthony is clueless, noting that he was on vacation before it appeared and telling CNN, "it didn't look burned to me, it just looked like it was pushed over." One local says he saw a lot of people in the field with ladders just before the crop circle was spotted, and another backs him up: "I saw them ... in the field just walking around, and it looked like they had little GPSes or something." A crop circle researcher tells the Monterey Herald it's obvious this circle was man-made (he cited its careful alignment with the road, among other things), and theorizes it's probably some sort of advertisement—or was. Anthony says he ordered the barley field plowed because all the people trying to access his land created a "food safety issue." (Click to read about the potential truth behind a similar mystery: desert fairy circles.)
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