Crop Jellyfish Creates, Uh, Mystery?

A 600-foot alien-looking jellyfish has cropped up in an Oxfordshire, England crop. Well, actually, it looks a lot like a terrestrial jellyfish cut large. But how did it get there?

It was "mysteriously cut last week into a barley field," the Daily Mail reports. Of course, LiveScience readers will be a little skeptical, as they should be. The Mail allows for that:

"Skeptics might suggest that someone in Oxfordshire is trying to muscle in on Wiltshire's dominance in the crop circle stakes — from April to the September harvest the mystery patterns are believed to bring millions of pounds in tourism to the western county."

Ah, yes, tourism. As with Bigfoot and Nessie, a little tomfoolery can be good for the local economy in a culture of people who want to believe. Stunts like this are also done by people who just enjoy the social experiment aspect — see what the media does with it and how people react.

(Aside: My favorite image of crop circles is one that shows several that are visible from space — no hoax involved.)

Robert Roy Britt is the Editorial Director of Imaginova. In this column, The Water Cooler, he looks at what people are talking about in the world of science and beyond.