The Circles Effect and Its Mysteries

Terence Meaden's 1989 Artetech work — the principal articulation of the plasma vortex hypothesis for crop circle formation. Meaden, a British physicist and meteorologist, argued that rotating columns of ionized atmospheric plasma — operating analogously to dust devils but producing ionization effects — could produce the circular flattening patterns characteristic of early-phase crop circles. The hypothesis attracted substantial early-1990s peer-reviewed engagement in meteorological literature before being substantially abandoned across the 1990s in light of the Bower-Chorley confession and the substantial increase in formation complexity beyond plausible vortex output.