By Tim Binnall
A peculiar crop formation recently appeared in Russia near the country's mysterious Lake Baikal and prompted an enlightening TV segment on the strange event. The unique design was reportedly discovered around the end of August in Russia's Irkutsk region and consists of a spiral containing several small spheres and rectangular shapes which winds into a large circle at the center. While such formations are something of a summer staple in England, they are rather rare in Russia and so a television crew was dispatched to the site to document the event in a segment which serves as an informative look at how the phenomenon may be perceived in the country.
In explaining the crop circle phenomenon to viewers, the program asserts that only five percent of the formations are "genuine" and offered the odd explanation that "their occurrence is usually associated with explosions in space." The show goes on to speak to what appears to be some kind of researcher who tells them that "we suspect it is a hoax," but indicated that they needed to examine the "breakages in the wheat" before they could be certain. The man then walks around the formation with an EMF detector and notes that the electromagnetic field at the center of the circle is "seven times higher than in the outermost spiral."
While the researcher ultimately opines that it the formation is man-made, he credits the people who created it, calling them "professionals" responsible for crafting "unbelievably beautiful figures." Noting that this was first time they have found a crop circle in the area, he mused that probably meant that the creators had nowhere to practice and, as such, the Irkutsk design was "not bad for a first try." The segment then takes a bizarre turn as it very briefly features a different man who muses that a gnome is somehow connected to the crop circle having appeared in the field, before finally interviewing the individual who first found the formation and he agrees with the researcher that it is likely the work of humans.
The appearance of the crop circle near Lake Baikal will undoubtedly interest paranormal enthusiasts as the mysterious site, which is both the world's deepest and oldest freshwater lake, has long been rumored to contain some kind of swimming humanoid creatures that Soviet armed forces are said to have encountered during a training exercise. While that might lead one to consider the possibility that the formation had some kind of supernatural origin, there is another theory, which understandably goes unmentioned by the TV program, which is that the circles and rectangles in the spiral are actually a Russian Morse code message saying "no more war."