Using a detailed closeup image [below] of the disc, kindly taken by Lucy Pringle, specifically for helping to decode the binary sequence, I was able to construct small squares or 'pixels' and superimpose them on the image. Then, starting from the centre and spiraling outwards, we get a 1 if the crop is standing and a 0 if the crop is flattened. Every 9th position is a small tuft of standing crop which is smaller than the standard 'pixels'. This I, along with several other researchers, interpret to be some kind of divider between digits. Between each marker digit are 8 'pixels', which conveniently corresponds to the standard 8 bits per byte notation that us computer programmers use. By using 8 bits we can represent anything from 00000000 which is 0 in decimal right up to 11111111 (ie. all 8 pixels 'on') which is 255 in decimal.

In order to represent numbers and letters of the alphabet, computers use a set of 128 characters which comprises what is known as the ASCII character set. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange and was devised by the ANSI corporation back in the 1960s. The original ASCII set comprised of 7 bits in order to represent 128 unique characters. However, modern computers use an 8 bit character set which can display 255 different characters. The 'upper' 128 characters are usually reserved for special characters such as accented foreign characters and things like the Euro symbol.

Going back to our spiral of binary digits in the crop formation disc, we obtain an initial grouping of 01000010 01100101 01110111 01100001 01110010 and so on, spiraling out from the centre. (see diagram). We can translate these binary sequences into their decimal equivalent and thus look them up in the ASCII character set to see what letters they correspond to.