I am exceptionally skeptical that someone can constrain and somehow document exactly the duration of creation without simultaneously documenting the process by which it was made.

"and there's supposed to be an IR film that went until 4: 30 am which clearly shows NO formation in the field at 4:30 am. (It's absolute light at 5 am) The formation was discovered at about 7 am"

Typical of the entirely unscientific way such things are documented. It would take 5 minutes to put every iota of this information and put it straight online. Time stamped images would be good. Chuck the IR film footage on Vimeo for all to assess.

As for making it - seems very easy to me.

Define the circle (rope and board - note that the outer edge is entirely un 'woven')

Do the rows that, oh what a coincidence, line up exactly with the tractor tracks.

Then, alternate clockwise and counterclockwise board trampling from the inside out.

I don't wish to seem rude - but seriously, isn't that quite an obvious, simple, clear, and frankly, self evident method to create that pattern? It didn't take 5 seconds to see it.

No mud. It rained. DUHHHH - if there was mud on the folded crop after it was made.....it got washed away. I don't see why there would be much mud anyway. You would spend much of the time walking over a bed of crushed crops, not on the soil.

And if we are to believe the documented time - that gives them 2.5 hrs. I see no reason this could not be done in that period of time. Doesn't look especially big to me - say 36M across? Let's do the maths of trampled distance assuming a 1m wide plank.

1 large circle. Approx 110m

36 lines left-to-right - Approx 336 metres total

18 concentric circles, trampled in alternate directions. Approx 550 metres

Then two further semi-cricle paths that look about two-boards wide - that'd be another 220 metres.

Total distance trampled - 1.2km.

A team of three - one leader, two tramplers - each covering only 600 metres. 20 metres a minute each? That's less than 1/4 of a slow walking pace. Bingo - there's your 30 minutes, remarkably

Does none of this come to mind when you see a pattern like that? How much 'studying' is being done to avoid coming up with quite simple explanations and analysis like the above.