Manton Drove, Chalk Pit, and the NASA Curiosity Rover landing on Mars: a precise interpretation of that “polar clock in crops”  

A “polar clock in crops” appeared at Manton Drove near Marlborough on June 2, 2012. It showed best assigned values of August 5, Sunday, 16 hours, 45 minutes, 53 seconds for some unspecified event in the near future:  

Those values were measured accurately and posted early in June. In retrospect, we can see that its three inner rings of “August 5, Sunday” were meant to mark an upcoming date when NASA Curiosity Rover would land in Gale Crater on Mars: 

To remind us of their “polar clock” from June, the crop artists also drew a “long spiral” of similar shape at Chalk Pit on August 2, three days before Curiosity Rover was scheduled to land.  

What about its three outer rings of “16-45-53”? Do they really represent “hours, minutes and seconds”? Probably not. The hourly time for Mars Rover landing was reckoned differently in every time zone on Earth as 22:31 PDT in Los Angeles, 1:31 EDT the next day in New York, or 5:31 UTC the next day in London.  

Those numbers do match, however, the planet-wide declination of our Sun on August 5, Sunday as 16 degrees, 45 minutes and 53 seconds, at an hourly time of 1315 UTC. They also match the precise latitude 16 degrees, 45 minutes, 53 seconds of a famous Mayan ruin in modern-day Belize called “Caracol”.  

If you know a little astronomy, this means that on August 5, Sunday at noon, our Sun passed directly overhead the tallest pyramid in Caracol called “Caana”. It was a solar zenith of the kind observed in every Mayan city on different yearly dates, depending on their respective latitudes:  

What a strange and exciting message to appear in crops! Could it have come from the ancient Mayans, or from other modern-day people who follow the same culture and astronomy?  

And why is the Curiosity Rover landing so important to them? Shortly after this was written, another spectacular crop picture appeared close to Milk Hill on the “polar clock” date of August 5, Sunday. It showed a schematic image of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory, and its intended landing site in Gale Crater on Mars.  

Red Collie (Dr. Horace R. Drew)