Satellite imagery confirms the presence of mysterious “magic circles” in 15 countries
Miscellaneous / / October 02, 2023
Previously, they were found only in the Namib Desert and Australia, but now they have been found even in Kazakhstan.
“Magic circles” or, as they are also called, “witch circles” have been raising questions and disagreements among scientists for several years now. Over the past decades, experts have hotly debated the origin of these strange, ring-like patterns of dry vegetation in the barren land.
Typically such formations are from 2 to 15 meters wide. In the central part there is always bare earth, and the circle itself is formed by dry green grass. These rings may disappear and reappear over time. They were first discovered in the Namib Desert, which stretches from Angola to northern South Africa.
For a long time it was believed that these formations were specific only to Namibia, but in 2014 similar circles were noticed in the remote arid regions of Western Australia. Now, a new study shows that "magic circles" are found in 263 places in 15 countries on three continents.
The study is based on satellite images and
published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.To search for such formations, scientists trained an image recognition model with images of famous circles from Namibia and Australia. They applied the model to satellite imagery of 575,000 2.5-acre patches of dryland habitat around the world.
And although drylands cover 41% of the land surface, the researchers' model determined that only a small portion potentially contains circles: about 50 square kilometers. The researchers consulted satellite imagery to manually confirm that magic circle-like patterns were observed in nearly every location identified by the AI, from Kazakhstan to Madagascar.
We have discovered "magic circle" sites in many other places that we had no idea existed before. suspected because most of the work on this topic has been carried out in just two countries, Namibia and Australia.
Fernando Maestre
co-author of the study, an ecologist from the University of Alicante in Spain
Based on their findings, they created a profile of the types of habitats in which these mysterious formations are most often found. These are typically hot, dry areas with sandy, low-nitrogen soils that receive 10 to 30 centimeters of rainfall annually.
Other researchers who have worked with these circles are in no hurry to draw conclusions and require field research, who can confirm whether any of the newly identified sites are "true magical in circles." This opinion adheres to Stefan Götzin is an ecologist at the University of Göttingen in Germany.
He was supported by Walter Tschinkel, a biologist at the University of Florida who was not involved in the study. He noted that the new patterns "do not quite meet the criterion of magic circles." The only problem is that there is still no single definition of the “magic circles of Namibia”.
This is a little-studied and sometimes inexplicable phenomenon that is simply not in the scientific nomenclature. As a result, scientists argue about something that everyone understands differently. But it is possible that studying circles in 263 new locations will solve this natural mystery and put an end to the controversy.
According to one theory, the appearance of “magic circles” is a consequence of the self-regulation of vegetation in the struggle for water in drought conditions. Stronger plants independently and actively grow upward and at the same time fill neighboring areas of the ground with their roots, leaving no chance for new grass to sprout. Simply put, forming circles is a way to survive.
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