Moving stones (eng. Sailing stones), the so-called sliding or creeping stones -
a geological phenomenon discovered on the dry Lake Racetrack Playa in Death Valley in the United States.

The clip of Alina Artz "You can't do it differently with me" was just filmed in 2012 in Death Valley
in California, where you can observe this amazing phenomenon

Racetrack Playa is located in Death Valley, California.
Its name comes from two seemingly incompatible words: English racetrack -
"race track" and Spanish playa - "shore".

Racetrack Playa. Nothing special can be seen from the satellite (photo from www2.nature.nps.gov).

Stones are lying at the bottom - weighty blocks weighing up to thirty kilograms. But in fact, they do not lie there motionless:
at times they themselves move, leaving behind them on the ground shallow (no more than a couple of centimeters), but very long
(up to several tens of meters) furrows.
Racetrack Playa and the Milky Way above it. But here we are more interested in such strange stripes on the ground, and not this delightful in the sky
(photo by Dan Duriscoe, U.S. National Park Service). This picture is larger - 1232 × 397 in size - is.

So far, however, no one has yet seen the movement of these stones and filmed them.
But there is no doubt that the stones are moving - furrows stretch from almost every one of them.

Dashing turns, frozen in clay, and mysterious stones in the middle of a dry lake.
For some photographers and Photoshop lovers, this simple plot haunts (photo by Martin Quinn).

However, at the beginning of the 20th century, scientists appeared out of nowhere and said,
that the cause of the mysterious movement is in some kind of magnetic fields.
This version had nothing to do with reality, and did not really explain anything.

Space for imagination! Some tourists try with creeping stones:
a) racing them, b) bowling and c) just riding them.
The stones themselves, however, patiently ignore all this clowning (photo from wckitto.com).

Inexperienced paparazzi prefer to hone their skills on leisurely celebrities (photo by Raymond Soemarsono).

So the researchers were able to identify a number of factors that clearly contribute to the movement of blocks.
The first factor is a rather slippery base under the stone, in other words, dirt.
At least the shape of the trace testifies in favor of this argument.
The paths that the stones leave behind have a clear shape with smooth edges,
which means that at first the soil was soft and only then froze.

"Hey! Chur, do not cut! (photo by Angelo Cavalli).

But a slippery base is only a condition for mobility.
And the main factor due to which the movement begins is the wind, which pushes the stones lying on the slippery clay.
However, not everyone supported the idea about the wind then.
For example, geologist George M. Stanley from the University of Michigan did not believe in it one bit,
justifying his opinion by the fact that the stones are too heavy to be moved by air masses.

The movement lines of some stones are especially straight... (photo melastmohican/flickr.com, Roberto Feliciano and from photo-net).

In addition, there were also considerations that earthquakes could influence the movement of stones.
However, this conjecture was quickly rejected, since seismic activity intensifies in that area extremely rarely,
besides, it is very weak in order to demonstrate such an effect.

... And not so much others (photo from coordinate-43places.com).

Sometimes stones write out such unusual and complex lines that they often turn over, making “somersaults” in the process of movement.
(photo courtesy of goldcoastgalleries.com and photo by Jon Sullivan).

At the bottom of Racetrack Playa there are also stones that do not move anywhere. However, they are removed extremely rarely and reluctantly.
It is understandable: why photograph all sorts of uninteresting bricks? (photo from pdphoto.org).

Some nearby stones move in parallel, while others move in different directions.
This fact, noted by Sharpe and Carey, is evidence that ice was not involved in the process.
Stones moving at the expense of it and located nearby would invariably be frozen into one ice floe and
would definitely move together (photo from subversiveelement.com and Daniel Mayer).

Tourists rarely come here. First, Racetrack Playa is far from any means of communication.
Second, it's not safe to be here.
At least because of the same floods that, as a result of downpours, turn out to be so unexpected and strong,
which sometimes lead to a tragic outcome (photo from geography.sierra.cc.ca.us).

The source of the stones is a dolomite hill in the south of Racetrack Playa.
and volcanic rock from adjacent slopes (photo from pdphoto.org).

"Paths" from boulders remain after the bottom of the Racetrack Playa completely dries up.
But the boulders themselves remain, by the way, not always.
It is known that several times people saw only furrows, which means that someone for some reason appropriated the boulders.
But who and why is unknown. It is possible that for reasons of simple aesthetics - this one, for example, is very nice.
Could look good in our editorial office (photo by Dan Mitchell).

Why do some stones move while others stand still?
Is this due to the fact that, after the waters have drained, the land is drier in some places than in others?
Do the winds move in narrow or wide streams, and how does this affect the stones?
Why are the stones "scattered" all over the bottom of the lake, while as a result of such regular winds,
directed almost always in the same way, the main part of the blocks should be at one of the edges?
Is this due to the fact that the stones are somehow “returned” back, or are they simply taken by people for some reason?
And at what time do the stones move more often: in winter, when there is most precipitation, or in summer?
Lots of unknowns, lots of...

August 28th, 2012

Well, here is another well-known mystery, and maybe not a mystery, but enough fog and mystery have already been released :-) Let's figure it out ...

Sailing stones, also called sliding or crawling stones, are a geological phenomenon found on the dry Lake Racetrack Playa in Death Valley in the United States. stones
move slowly along the clay bottom of the lake, as evidenced by the long tracks left behind them. The stones move on their own without the help of living beings, but no one has ever seen or recorded the movement on camera.

Stones move only once in two or three years, and most of the traces remain for 3-4 years. Stones with a ribbed bottom leave more direct marks, while stones lying on the flat side wander from side to side. Sometimes the stones turn over, which is reflected in the size of their footprint.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the phenomenon was explained by supernatural forces, then during the formation of electromagnetism, an assumption arose about the effect of magnetic fields, which, in general, did not explain anything.

In 1948, geologists Jim McAlister and Allen Agnew mapped the location of the rocks and marked their tracks. A little later, the US National Park Service compiled a detailed description of the site and Life magazine published photos from Racetrack Playa, after which speculation began on what makes the stones move. Most hypotheses agreed that the wind at the wet surface of the lake bottom at least partly explains the phenomenon.

In 1955, geologist George Stanley of the University of Michigan published a paper arguing that the rocks were too heavy for the local wind to move. He and his colleague proposed a theory according to which, during the seasonal flooding of a dried-up lake, an ice crust forms on the water, which contributes to the movement of stones.

Clickable 4000 px

In May 1972, Robert Sharp (Caltech) and Dwight Carey (UCLA) started a stone movement monitoring program. Thirty stones with relatively recent footprints were marked and their location marked with pegs. For 7 years, during which the position of the stones was fixed, scientists created a model according to which, during the rainy season, water accumulates in the southern part of the lake, which spreads by wind along the bottom of the dried lake, wetting its surface. As a result, hard clay soil becomes very wet and the coefficient of friction drops sharply, which allows the wind to move even one of the largest stones (it was called Karen), which weighed about 350 kilograms.

Hypotheses of movement with the help of ice were also tested. Water spreading under the influence of wind can become covered with an ice crust at night, and stones located in the way of water will be frozen into the layer of ice. The ice around the stone could increase the cross section of interaction with the wind and help move the stones along the water flows. As an experiment, a corral with a diameter of 1.7 m was created around a stone 7.5 cm wide and weighing 0.5 kg.

The distance between the fence supports varied from 64 to 76 cm. If a layer of ice formed around the stones, then when moving, it could catch on the fence support and slow down the movement or change the trajectory, which would be reflected in the track from the stone. However, no such effects were observed - in the first winter, the stone passed near the fence support, moving 8.5 m beyond the fenced area in the direction of the northwest. The next time, 2 heavier stones were placed inside the corral - one of them moved in the same direction as the first five years later, but its companion did not budge during the period of research. This fact testified that if the ice crust has an influence on the movement of stones, then it must be small.

Ten of the marked rocks moved in the first winter of exploration, with rock A (called Mary Ann) crawling 64.5 m. It was noted that many of the rocks also moved in the next two winter period, and in summer and in other winters, the stones stood still. At the end of the study (after 7 years), only two of the 30 observed stones did not change their location. The smallest of the stones (Nancy) was 6.5 cm in diameter, and this stone moved a maximum total distance of 262 m and a maximum distance in one winter - 201 m. The most massive stone, the movement of which was recorded, weighed 36 kg.

Clickable 1600 px

In 1993, Paula Messina (California State University at San Jose) did her thesis on moving stones, which showed that, in general, the stones did not move in parallel. According to the researcher, this confirms that the ice does not contribute to movement in any way. After studying the changes in the coordinates of 162 stones (which were carried out using GPS), it was determined that neither their size nor their shape affects the movement of boulders. It turned out that the nature of the movement is largely determined by the position of the boulder on Racetrack Playa. According to the created model, the wind over the lake behaves in a very complex way, even forming a whirlwind in the center of the lake.

In 1995, a group led by Professor John Reid noted the high similarity of tracks from the winter of 1992-93 with tracks from the late 1980s. It has been shown that at least some of the rocks moved with currents of ice-covered water, with the width of the ice crust being about 800 m, as evidenced by characteristic traces scratched by a thin layer of ice. It was also determined that the boundary layer in which the wind slows down due to contact with the ground can be as small as 5 cm on such surfaces, which means that even very low stones can be affected by winds (whose speed reaches 145 km / h in winter).

There is no theory yet that would explain why adjacent stones can move in different directions when others stand still. It is also not clear why the stones are "scattered" all over the bottom of the lake, while regular winds would move them to one of the edges of the lake.

In some places of our planet, including Russia, huge boulder stones have long been found, which were suddenly removed from their "familiar places" and began to move independently.

Such is the legendary Blue Stone near Pereslavl-Zalessky, revered from paganism to the present day. The legend says that at the end of the 17th century, the Blue-stone, buried deeply and even crushed by an earthen mound, either slept peacefully for six months, then suddenly fired like a cannonball. It was drowned in Lake Pleshcheyevo, but after half a century, in the most incredible way, it returned to the hillock, where it is today, attracting pilgrims and tourists.

Clickable 1600 px

In Tibet, the monks of the most ancient Northern monastery have been compiling a biography of the so-called Buddha Stone for a millennium and a half. On the boulder, according to legend, his palms were imprinted. This shrine weighs 1100 kilograms. At the same time, independently, without any help, he climbs a mountain with a height of 2565 meters and descends from it along a spiral trajectory. Each ascent and descent exactly fits in 16 years.

As for other similar mysteries, - Alexey Makhinov continues, - then abroad, in California, for example, entire institutions are concerned about them. But haven't figured it out yet. They only assume that the matter is in combination natural conditions. It is possible that the stones move simply with the wind.

In some places, a natural mechanism may also turn on. For example, powerful sea tides. As in the Tugur Bay of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. There, daily fluctuations in sea level reach 9 meters. Imagine strength! I myself saw a furrow from a stone. It was large, over a meter high. The sea dragged the boulder for a kilometer and a half. Then it receded, but he remained.

At the beginning of this year, one extravagant theory enriched world science. According to the research of French biologists Arnold Reshar and Pierre Escolier, stones are living beings with an ultra-slow life process. They breathe (sensitive devices recorded a weak but regular pulsation of the samples), move. And everything is extremely slow: one breath in two weeks, one millimeter in a few days. In addition, scientists say, the stones change structurally, that is, they have age - they are old and young.

Another explanation stone movements may lie, according to scientists, in daily temperature fluctuations. Any body (including the studied stones) expands when heated - you should remember this from the school physics course. It is a scientifically established fact that during the summer months, the walls of houses illuminated by the sun increase (as if leaning) towards the south, which is one of the reasons for the destruction of buildings.

So the moving stones allegedly warm up during the day and expand to the south, and with the onset of night coolness they shrink, moreover, faster from the north side, where they were less warmed up. That is, slowly crawling to the south.
And from under the ground, the stones allegedly move upward towards the sun and a warm surface. However, this theory was quickly recognized as untenable - after all, following it, absolutely all the stones on earth must stubbornly crawl in one direction year after year, but very slowly. And for some reason this doesn't happen.

Scientists also recalled the presence of the specific gravity of stones and Archimedean forces, which can make boulders float up and move slowly in unsteady or loose soils. The studies also mentioned such factors as changes in gravitational fields, the geomagnetic properties of the planet, vibrations, subsidence and subsidence of the soil ... However, it has not yet been possible to clearly and easily explain what exactly is the matter here.

More recently, researchers moving stone phenomenon astronomers also joined in. The fact is that such objects have been found even in space! Rather, on an asteroid discovered several years ago Eros, where there were placers of boulders, absolutely not typical for the soil of the asteroid, which, moreover, constantly change their location. They crawl, too.

So far, this fact is vaguely explained by some unusually mobile soils of a celestial body with very little gravity. Maybe earthly wandering stones are aliens from outer space (for example, meteorites)?
In a word, despite the abundance of facts and many theories, it remains to state a dry fact: to date, the riddle of wandering stones has not been solved. The currently existing versions cannot yet satisfy serious scientists. The search for clues to the manifestation of the life of apparently lifeless objects continues.

Clickable

Milky Way over Death Valley

Clickable

Clickable 4000 px

Clickable 5000 px, panorama

Clickable 4000 px

Clickable 2000 px

Despite the progress of science, high tech, human exploration of outer space, our planet keeps many secrets undiscovered by earthly civilization. The mysteries of nature are sometimes so bizarre that they seem like real mysticism. A person will have to face more than once amazing phenomena, very often inexplicable by any physical process known to science today.

"" located in, a fairly well-known area, declared a National Reserve. The territory deserved its name quite justifiably. The valley is famous for its climate, arid and hot. Maximum temperature air, which was recorded in this area, about 57 degrees Celsius above zero. In fact, nowhere in the world, when measuring air temperature in natural conditions, the thermometer did not rise above this mark. At the moment, this record belongs to California's Death Valley.

The valley is famous not only for its high temperatures. The phenomenon of "Moving Stones" or Raystrek stones is quite widely known in the world. The unique phenomenon is very curious: stones of various shapes and weights move without any outside interference along the bottom of a dried-up lake. As a result of movement, clearly visible traces remain on the ground, stretching for tens of meters behind the "walkers". The weight of the stones is different, ranging from a few kilograms to boulders weighing several hundred kilograms. It is noteworthy that the stones have their own "gait". Some glide smoothly, and there are instances of "prowl" from side to side. There are even stones that manage to roll over to the other side. The movement itself occurs once every two or three years, however, the process of movement itself has never been able to be fixed. technical means.

Moving rocks are a geological phenomenon. These stones can be seen on the dry Lake Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, USA.

Why do stones move

There are many versions explaining the phenomenon, and sometimes the most fantastic ones are expressed. Previously, the strange phenomenon was attributed to the intervention of mysterious forces. Currently, researchers are considering the anomaly in terms of natural physical processes. They tried to explain the unusual behavior of the stones by sliding on a wet or icy surface, under the influence of air currents. To confirm the theory, certain experiments were carried out, but the results of the experiments do not allow us to unequivocally state that this version is correct.

The main assumptions of researchers are based on the features of the terrain and associated eddy currents. At first glance, there is a rational grain in this, but in this version there are some inconsistencies. If the cause of the movement is the wind, then why are the nearby stones crawling in different directions, and some do not remain in their places at all. Air flows have a certain regularity and, in all likelihood, would tend to move the stone "travelers" to one place, however, the stones are scattered over the entire area of ​​the bottom of the dried lake.

Despite the research, science cannot give a clear answer, which can cause an anomalous phenomenon. While the explorers try to solve the mystery, the stone walkers continue on their way to the goal of their journey known only to them.

Photo

Something supernatural is going on in Death Valley. Huge boulders themselves crawl along the bottom of a dry lake. No one touches them, but they crawl and crawl. Nobody saw them move. And all these moving stones of death valley stubbornly crawling, as if alive, occasionally turning over from side to side, leaving behind traces stretching for tens of meters. What do these stones need? Where are they crawling? What for?

Moving rocks in Death Valley

In Death Valley, located in California, there is Lake Racetrack Playa.

Its name comes from two seemingly incompatible words: the English racetrack - "race track" and the Spanish playa - "shore".

With the "shore" is more or less clear. The word playa in America refers to the lowlands, which, after the rains, are filled with water, thus turning into a lake. When the water begins to gradually descend, the area of ​​the lake decreases, and a shore forms around it. And after a while, when the moisture dries up, one shore, in fact, remains.

But with the "race track" everything is much more complicated. The clay bottom of Racetrack Playa is dry almost all the time, and nothing grows on it. It is covered with an almost uniform pattern of cracks forming irregular hexagonal cells. But there is something else, much more interesting.
Stones are lying at the bottom - weighty blocks weighing up to thirty kilograms. But in fact, they do not lie there motionless: at times they themselves move, leaving behind them shallow (no more than a couple of centimeters), but very long (up to several tens of meters) furrows on the ground. They were nicknamed.

This is not the work of human hands or other limbs of any other animals. No one was caught in such strange entertainment (at least until now), because no one needs these fragments - neither people, nor even animals.

Moving stones: assumptions and legends

For a while there was the only logical suggestion that crawling moving rocks in death valley compelled by supernatural forces.

However, at the beginning of the 20th century, scientists showed up out of nowhere and said that the reason for the mysterious movement was in some kind of magnetic fields. This version had nothing to do with reality, and did not really explain anything.

However, there is nothing unexpected in it: the electromagnetic picture of the world at that time still reigned in science ... But more about that, perhaps, some other time.

The first scientific papers describing the trajectories of moving stones appeared in the late 1940s-1950s. However, this did not help to find out the nature of the movement: all the researchers could do was come up with many new hypotheses, and some of them were very complex.

In any case, scientists almost unanimously argued that this strange phenomenon is associated with the stormy rains that occasionally occur in Death Valley, as well as the floods that follow them and everything else that is connected with it.

Most of the concepts about the movement of these stones (whatever they were called: riding, crawling, swimming, moving, sliding, dancing ... without the Rolling Stones still managed) converged on some common points. So the researchers were able to identify a number of factors that clearly contribute to the movement of blocks.

The first factor is a rather slippery base under the stone, in other words, dirt. At least the shape of the trace testifies in favor of this argument. The paths left behind by moving stones have a clear shape with smooth edges, which means that at first the soil was soft and only then froze.

But a slippery base is only a condition for mobility. And the main factor due to which the movement begins is the wind, which pushes the stones lying on the slippery clay.

However, not everyone supported the idea about the wind then. For example, geologist George M. Stanley from the University of Michigan did not believe in it one bit, justifying his opinion by the fact that the stones are too heavy to be moved by air masses.
The idea was put forward that the wind did not push the stones themselves, but also pieces of ice that grew on the boulders and played the role of a kind of sail, increasing the area of ​​contact with the atmosphere. At the same time, it was assumed that the ice makes it easier to slide through the mud.

In addition, there were also considerations that earthquakes could influence the movements of moving stones. However, this conjecture was quickly dismissed, since seismic activity intensifies very rarely in that area, and besides, it is very weak in order to demonstrate such an impact.

Moving Stones - Sharpe-Carey Explained

In 1972, Robert Sharp, a scientist from the California Institute of Technology (California Institute of Technology), who, by the way, became famous as an expert in the field of geologists of the surfaces of the Earth and Mars, together with Dwight Carey, then a student at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), made a breakthrough in the study of this anomaly. For six years, they tracked how moving stones move and learned a lot of interesting things about this phenomenon. And most importantly, they found out that ice has nothing to do with movement.

The same researchers introduced a nice practice - for the sake of distinction, they began to give names to moving stones, of course - female.

Sharpe and Carey, after analyzing the data obtained, created a kind of approximate model. According to it, in the rainy season, water accumulates in the deepening of the lake, and its huge volumes merge into it from the slopes of the surrounding mountains.

This causes flooding, which causes the hard clay soil to soak so much that the coefficient of friction drops sharply. As a result, under the influence of the wind, even Karen, one of the largest stones, weighing about 350 kilograms, can move and travel some distance.

According to their concept, the movement of stones did not begin during a downpour, but after it - after all, it took some time to soak a rather hard and completely dry surface.

Moving stones - the key to Pola Messina

It turned out that the movement largely depends on what part of Racetrack Playa they are in. According to the model created by Pola Messina, the wind over the lake behaves in a very complex way.
After a storm, it is divided into two streams, which is associated with the peculiarities of the geometry of the mountains surrounding Racetrack Playa. Because of this, moving stones, localized at different edges of the lake, move in different, almost perpendicular directions. And in the center, the winds collide and twist into a mini-tornado, causing the moving rocks to spin as well.
It is interesting that in the process of movement they shift significantly, falling under the influence of either one or another wind, or in general - falling into a vortex in the center.


However, despite the fact that almost every year Professor Messina studies the location of moving stones, she still cannot answer a number of difficult questions.

Moving rocks are one of the biggest mysteries of science. They are located in Death Valley - the US National Park with an area of ​​​​about 13,800 km². Boulders of different sizes scattered over a vast territory tend to move, leaving furrows in the sand - traces of their movement.

Moving rocks are one of the biggest mysteries of science

In the late 40s, geologists Jim McAlister and Allen Agnew made the first map of the location of boulders and their tracks. Later, employees of the US National Park Service joined the process. After that, the information became available to readers of Life magazine, on the pages of which they posted pictures of boulders along with facts known at that time about them.

For a long time, the study of the moving rocks of Death Valley was the subject of near-scientific speculation. Most hypotheses attributed what was happening to the unusual behavior of the wind at the bottom of the dried-up Lake Racetrack Playa.

In the mid-1950s, geologist George Stanley, studying the phenomenon, came to the conclusion that the stones were too heavy to move with gusts of wind. The scientist suggested that during the seasonal flooding of the lake, a layer of ice forms on its surface, which contributes to the movement of stones.

If you do not take into account theories about the influence of supernatural forces and electromagnetism on boulders, then all the concepts about crawling stones boiled down to 2 following factors:

1. Slippery surface under stone(mud or ice). Confirmation of this is the shape of the trace. Crawling clods leave clear-edged furrows behind them, which means that the soil was soft at first and did not prevent slipping.
2. Wind pushing boulders.

At that time, there was a theory that claimed that the air masses did not act on the blocks themselves, but on the pieces of ice that had grown on them. Thus, peculiar sails appeared on the stones, and due to the increase in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bcontact with the atmosphere, the boulders could move faster.

In addition, some scientists suggested that an earthquake was the cause of the phenomenon. But Death Valley is a quiet place in terms of seismic activity, which is why this idea was quickly dismissed.

Research by California scientists

In the spring of 1972, Robert Sharpe and Dwight Carey began a boulder tracking program. For this, 30 blocks with fresh tracks were selected, each of which was given a name. With stakes, the researchers indicated their initial position. It took scientists about 7 years to formulate their theory. It consisted of the following:

1. During the rainy season, water accumulates in the southern part of Racetrack Playa.
2. The wind carries moisture along the bottom of the dried lake.
3. Clay soil gets very wet.
4. Since the friction force has decreased significantly, the wind blows away even the largest blocks weighing more than 300 kg.

This study also tested the hypothesis that the stones are moving with the help of ice. During winter nights, the temperature in the valley is sometimes negative. Then the water, driven by air masses, is covered with a layer of ice, into which boulders freeze.

The Secret of the Crawling Stones (video)

Scientists conducted an experiment: among the moving stones, one small one (about 0.5 kg) was chosen, around which they built a pen 1.7x1.7 m with a support distance of 65-75 cm. It was assumed that when sliding, the ice could catch on the fence, due to for which the trajectory of movement will change. In the first winter, the stone moved 8.5 m, passing the supports, which disproved the hypothesis. The following year, 2 large boulders were placed in the corral. One of them took 5 years to move in the same direction as the stone from the first experiment. The second one remained in place.

In the first winter of research, only a third of the stones began to move, while one of the boulders named Mary Ann crawled almost 65 m. In subsequent years, others joined them. In just 7 years, out of 30 boulders, only 2 did not budge. The smallest of the stones, Nancy, moved to the maximum total distance - 262 m, of which 201 m he crawled in one season.

Gallery: Death Valley Stones (55 photos)

Dissertation of Paula Messina

In the early 90s, Death Valley became interested in Paula Messina from the University of San Jose. The researcher preferred to call the stones dancing. The phenomenon impressed the woman so much that she devoted her dissertation to atmospheric and geological phenomena at the bottom of Racetrack Playa.

In her work, Paula Messina used the power of GPS, so her data was more accurate than previous researchers. Thanks to the tracking system, it was possible to observe the trajectory of movement with an accuracy of 2-5 cm.

It was found that mostly the stones crawled in parallel. From this, Messina concluded that the ice had nothing to do with the process. After studying the trajectory of movement of 162 blocks, the researcher came to the conclusion that neither their size nor shape affect the sliding. Along with this, it was found that the change in the coordinates of boulders depends on their initial location at the bottom of Racetrack Playa.

Messina suggested that the air masses over the lake behave in a strange way. After the storm, 2 streams are formed, which is explained by the features of the relief of the mountains surrounding the lake. This leads to the fact that stones located in different areas move in opposite, often perpendicular, directions. In the center of Racetrack Playa, the air currents collide and twist to form a tornado. Thus, moving from one part of the lake to another, the boulders each time fall under the influence of different winds. This can explain the fact that the stones move along complex trajectories.

In 2014, a work was published in one of the non-commercial scientific and publishing projects, the authors of which described in detail the traces of boulders. The researchers placed several stones weighing from 5 to 15 kg at the bottom of Racetrack Playa, before installing tracking sensors and cameras on them. During the experiment, it was possible to establish that the stones moved because of the huge (several tens of meters in diameter) and very thin (up to 1 cm) sections of ice. Carried away by the wind, the boulders slid at a speed of up to 5 m per minute.

The most mysterious stones of our planet (video)

Death Valley still attracts scientists. Science has yet to answer a whole host of questions. For example, why do some boulders move long distances every winter, while others stay put for years? Can this be explained by the fact that the bottom of the dried lake is moistened unevenly? Also, recent studies have not yet explained why the valley is covered with stones evenly, while due to regular winds, most of them should be concentrated along the perimeter of Racetrack Playa.

It is worth noting that Death Valley is not the only place where you can find moving boulders. A similar geological phenomenon is observed in the south of Romania, as well as on the Moon and Mars.

Attention, only TODAY!