When the rocks move, they move about 15 feet per minute.
Posted on 08/28/2014 6:11:20 PM PDT by rjbemsha
For years scientists have theorized about how large rocks — some weighing hundreds of pounds — zigzag across Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park, leaving long trails etched in the earth.
Now two researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, have photographed these "sailing rocks" being blown by light winds across the former lake bed.
Richard Norris and James Norris said the movement is made possible when ice sheets that form after rare overnight rains melt in the rising sun, making the hard ground muddy and slick.
On Dec. 20, 2013, the cousins catalogued 60 rocks moving across the playa's pancake-flat surface.
"Observed rock movement occurred on sunny, clear days, following nights of sub-freezing temperatures," they wrote in a report published Wednesday in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE.
(Excerpt) Read more at sg.news.yahoo.com ...
So basically they’re saying what they’ve been saying for quite a while now.
Yup.
This “mystery” was solved quite a number of years ago. This is not new.
Yeah, they move pretty easily across the slick mud when its wet.
No! It’s aliens. I want them to be aliens!
I love this place. I was there last year. It’s a rough ride to get there, but the playa is a fascinating place. My daughter and I spends hours there.
I know some people find the desert to sparse and hot. It’s stuff like this place that make it as interesting as Yellowstone and the like.
I was back in DVD this summer. But it was just too damned hot to ride all the way out to the racetrack.
Auto correct sometimes makes your words read like a foreign exchange student from Nepal.
I wish they would stop solving this. It’s becoming the definition of insanity.
My grandfather took me there and explained it to me when I was 12.
Rock on!
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