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Crop circle easy as pi

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Published: June 17, 2008 at 5:14 PM

WROUGHTON, England, June 17 (UPI) -- Astrophysicists have said a crop circle discovered near Wroughton, England, is a complex coded image of the first 10 digits of pi.

Astrophysicist Michael Reed said the image, the origins of which are unknown, represents 3.141592654, the first ten digits of pi, The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.

"The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up. The little dot near the center is the decimal point," Reed said. "The code is based on 10 angular segments with the radial jumps being the indicator of each segment."

"Starting at the center and counting the number of one-tenth segments in each section contained by the change in radius clearly shows the values of the first 10 digits in the value of pi," he said.

In Euclidean geometry, pi -- an irrational number -- is a mathematical constant which represents the ratio of the circumference of any circle to its diameter.

Topics: Michael Reed
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