Walter Tschinkel may not have solved the mystery of the fairy circles, but he can tell you that they’re alive. Tens of thousands of the formations — bare patches of soil, 2 to 12 meters in diameter — freckle grasslands from southern Angola to northern South Africa, their perimeters often marked by a tall fringe of grass. Locals say they’re the footprints of the gods. Scientists have thrown their hands up in the air. But now Tschinkel, a biologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, has discovered something no one else has.Hmmm, somebody has figured out something new. Let's take a look, so I do and I see green grass:
Well, something like that ought to visible from a satellite, so I look up NamibRand Nature Reserve on Google Maps:
Area shown is about 75 miles by 50.
That doesn't look like grass, that looks like sand. I poke around for a bit and I find some scrub brush, but I don't find anything that looks like grass, so I complain to the author, who promptly replies with this useful tip: "zoom down to about 300 m eye altitude". Could that really be? But I do as I am bid, and the "fairy circles" do indeed appear:
Red grass. Hmmph. Where are we? Mars?
Update December 2016. Added this line so anyone searching for Namibia will find this post.
Update November 2021 replaced missing map.
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