THEY may not quite have the elegance of the faked corn circles that hit the headlines in the 1980s, and were attributed to aliens. But at least the “fairy circles” of Namibia seem to be genuine. However, the three main theories to explain their origins have just been dismissed, following an in-depth study by South African researchers.
“They still remain a mystery,” says Gretel van Rooyen, a botanist at the University of Pretoria, who headed the team conducting the study.
Fairy circles are discs of completely bare sandy soil anything from 2 to 10 metres in diameter. Found exclusively along…
