"Moving Stone", Misterious Fact Explained

'Moving stones' of Death Valley explained

Death Valley National Park is a strange place by any standard. Famously known for being the hottest place on earth, Death Valley also sits at the driest and lowest elevation in North America.

Its strangest feature of all is the mysterious Racetrack Playa. Here, rocks drift across the flat desert landscape, seemingly propelled by no power other than their own!

The mystery of the sailing stones

Located on the border of California and Nevada, Death Valley National Park was designated in 1933, and is home to one of the world's strangest phenomena: rocks that move along the desert ground with no gravitational cause. Known as "sailing stones," the rocks vary in size from a few ounces to hundreds of pounds. Though no one has ever seen them actually move in person, the trails left behind the stones and periodic changes in their location make it clear that they do.

 

Postulates proposed to explain the mystery of sailing stones

Several theories have been proposed to explain this curious phenomenon

1). Some saying it is due to magnetism

2). It is gravitational forces that sails stones

3). Someone propose this must be the work of the aliens

4).Some have suggested that the strong winds that blow through the area might move the rocks after the lakebed has become slick.

Scientific explanations

The rocks of Racetrack Playa are composed of dolomite and syenite, the same materials that make up the surrounding mountains. They tumble down due to the forces of erosion, coming to rest on the parched ground below. Once they reach the level surface of the playa, the rocks somehow move horizontally, leaving perfect tracks behind them to record their path.

The sailing stones have been observed and studied since the early 1900s, and several theories have been suggested to explain their mysterious movements.

In 2014, scientists were able to capture the movement of the stones for the first time using time-lapse photography. The results strongly suggest that the sailing stones are the result of a perfect balance of ice, water, and wind. In the winter of 2014, rain formed a small pond that froze overnight and thawed the next day, creating a vast sheet of ice that was reduced by midday to only a few millimeters thick. Driven by a light wind, this sheet broke up and accumulated behind the stones, slowly pushing them forward.

We may think we have found the answer to their movement, but who knows what other secrets lie in Death Valley? .

Visiting the Racetrack

To see the moving rocks of the Racetrack Playa, drive 2 miles south of the Grandstand parking area. While the precise location of the sailing stones is always changing, you can usually get the best view by walking about a half-mile toward the southeast corner of the playa.

When you do visit, please do not disturb the rocks or their tracks. Following rain, the playa becomes muddy, so be careful to avoid approaching the rocks and leaving unsightly footprints during wet conditions. Driving off established roads is also prohibited.

Different trails formed by the sailing stones

These trails and tracks, she was told, were formed by the stones as and when they moved on the Playa floor. Most of them are about 2.5 centimetre deep, 3-12 inches wide and hundreds of feet long.

Of the Incredible and the Mysterious

Post many other attempts, two geologists – Robert Sharp of Cal Tech and Dwight Carey of UCLA – decided to closely track the movement of 30 stones on the Playa and wooden planks were planted around those stones. It was then thought that if (according to an earlier theory) ice sheets were responsible for the movement, the ice would freeze the wooden planks thus restricting the mobility of the stones. However, some stones still escaped and created their tracks.

Latest Developments

The most recent theory has been developed by scientist Ralph D. Lorenz and his team. They’ve suggested that the stones float due to small ice rafts which “allow the rocks to move by buoyantly reducing the reaction and friction forces at the bed.” Read the citation here.I had heard of underwater museums and volcano grills, but never had I imagined that there was a place on Earth where stones could move on their own.

Mystery Behind the Sailing Stones of Death Valley

In their book "Mysteries of the World: Unexplained Wonders and

Mysterious Phenomena

Not all of the stones in Death Valley move. Those that do only move every two to three years, and they don't all move at the same time or in the same direction. In fact, some seem to have made abrupt 90-degree turns, judging from the tracks, which range from tens of feet to hundreds of feet long. Most of the stones are not huge boulders but instead range from about 6 to 18 inches (15 to 45 centimeters) in diameter.

Ending a half-century of geological speculation, scientists have finally seen the process that causes rocks to move atop Racetrack Playa, a desert lake bed in the mountains above Death Valley, California. Researchers watched a pond freeze atop the playa, then break apart into sheets of ice that — blown by wind — shoved rocks across the lake bed.

But when the ice melted away that afternoon, they saw freshly formed trails left behind by more than 60 moving rocks. And on 9 January, James Norris returned to the playa with Lorenz and was able to record video of the roving rocks. “This is transformative,” says Lorenz. “It’s not just an anecdotal report, but we have before and after pictures, and meteorological information simultaneous with the event.” By the end of the winter, the farthest-moving rock had travelled 224 metres.

The most likely solution to the mystery involves a combination of wind, temperature and water. Although Racetrack Playa is a dry lakebed, it is not always dry; in fact, water collects on the surface after rainfall or when snow from surrounding peaks melts. Brian Dunning, a California researcher who discussed this mystery on his Skeptoid podcast, notes that when water is present and the temperature falls below freezing — as it sometimes does — a thin sheet of ice is created: "Solid ice, moving with the surface of the lake and with the inertia of a whole surrounding ice sheet, would have no trouble pushing a rock along the slick muddy floor... As the wind shifts and the flow ebbs, these ice floes drag the rocks across the slippery mud surface in zig-zagging paths, even moving heavy rocks and sometimes dragging some but washing past others nearby."

NASA Scientist Ralph Lorenz originally came to Death Valley in 2006 to investigate meteorological patterns in the area. His curiosity was piqued by the enigma of the Racetrack Playa and its famous sailing stones.NASA researcher Ralph Lorenz became intrigued by the enigmatic stones while studying Death Valley weather conditions. He developed a tabletop experiment to show how the rocks might glide across the surface of the lakebed.

Shy stones

Fortunately, the technology exists to investigate the mystery remotely. In 2013, a team of scientists using rocks with motion-activated GPS units and time-lapse photography captured the first video footage of the stones creeping across the desert floor.  [Related: High-Tech Sleuthing Cracks Mystery of Death Valley's Moving Rocks]

EXPERIMENT

Lorenz pursued a little experiment in his kitchen back home, which he explained for Smithsonian magazine in June 2013. He put an inch of water in a container, added a piece of rock large enough to stick up above the water’s surface, and popped the whole thing in the freezer.

Next he took the rock, now embedded in ice, and placed it in a tray of water with sand on the bottom. All he needed to do was blow on the rock to set it in motion. The movement also produced a trace in the sand.

Lorenz investigated further after his initial experiment proved more promising as a solution to mystery than any other theory previously considered. He and his team presented the findings in a paper in 2011.

Indeed, it took some physics to get the stones in motion, or rather the perfect combination of water, ice, and a light breeze. As this process could sometimes take decades, scientists installed time-lapse cameras. They were able to capture, for the first time, how the Racetrack Playa changes.

 Comments

The solution to the rocks' tracks from being frozen in blown ice cakes has been known since at least May of 1966. I was at the Racetrack Playa then with my father, Ed Seiler - an Alaskan bush pilot, and a geology class of about 20 students and their professor. After viewing the rocks' tracks, the professor asked the class and us what we thought caused the tracks, and my dad raised his hand. He said these tracks are the same as those seen in shallow ponds on the Alaskan tundra. The tracks there are occur in the spring when the ice in the ponds has mostly melted, but with some rocks caught in ice cakes. The wind pushes the ice cakes across the ponds and the rocks stuck in them leave tracks just like at racetrack playa. The geology professor agreed that this same cause was the most likely explanation for the tracks of Racetrack Playa. May, 1966.

>>>>The new explanation “makes sense to me”, says Carey, who is now an environmental regulatory consultant in Brea, California. “Eventually you’re going to get enough force on the pile of ice behind the rocks to be able to move them.”

The mystery has not been solved completely, however.