The Chilbolton Face
2001 · Beside Chilbolton Observatory · Hampshire · England
WHAT IT IS
A face built from standing wheat 'dots' of different sizes, like a newspaper photograph, a few days before the Arecibo reply appeared in the same field.
THE ALIEN READING
Richard Hoagland and others compared it to the 'Face on Mars'; callers to Art Bell's radio show said no one could lay out a halftone image that size in the dark. Its pairing with the Arecibo reply beside a radio telescope is the heart of the 'Chilbolton message'.
WHAT THE RECORD SAYS
No one has claimed it (The Skeptic, 2023). It is a printer's halftone, not a grid of pixels, and a halftone formation had already appeared at All Cannings that June. The next year the Circlemakers laid a halftone portrait of two TV presenters in about six hours.
WHERE IT STANDS
Disputed. No maker has claimed it. Sceptics say people made it; proponents point to what they say people could not do.
STATUS IS OUR CURRENT ASSESSMENT, NOT A VERDICT · REVIEWED 5 OCT 2026
THE RECORD
- DATE
- 2001
- PLACE
- Beside Chilbolton Observatory · Hampshire · England
- MADE BY
- Unclaimed
- TYPE
- Faces & figures
- TECHNICAL
- Wheat · halftone face of varying 'dots' · reported mid-August 2001 (sources give the 14th to the 19th)
