Moving stones at the Racetrack in Death Valley

Ah the voice of sanity....nice one Ace

If there was ice, the ground would also be frozen, and less likely to have channels cut out as the stones move.

The largest stone I found was approximately 5# - I didn't disturb them, but am using weights of others of comparable size.

The surface is very hard - there are places where it had obviously rained, and some individuals and their children had ignored the park's request to stay off the Racetrack when it is wet. I saw where the mud appeared to have stuck to their shoes, like thick paint - but there was no depth, or penetration to the footprints.

I am thinking along the lines of some sort of seismic activity, small tremors that might produce a large enough frequency to allow for the relatively light stones to make the troughs and move about freely - that may also explain the irratic patterns of troughs, while others are straghter.

Dear SPIJ,

Are you suggesting that float ice cannot form on a lake without first freezing the muddy lake bottom?

What evidence do you have that the consistency of mud caused by rain is the same as a muddy lake bottom?

Why do you believe that the mark left by a child's boot should be identical to that of a stone that was pushed across a muddy lake bottom by tons of wind blown float ice?

I would be interested to hear your theories regarding global warming, the Bermuda triangle, and UFO's.

DRY lakebed, Ace...dry. hasn't been a lake for centuries.

We're talking about the Death Valley dessert, here - hottest place in the USA. In this particular area there are no flash floods, (other parts of Death Valley, yes - but flash floods would have washed the sediment away long ago.

Who said anything about a child's boot print being identical to a stone being pushed...?

These stones are relatively light, and are still moving. Still scarring the DRY lakebed. I haven't a clue how ice could form in 135° heat, and the evenings are far from Arctic norms.

Appreciate your response, though.

p.s.

Might want to hop on your UFO and drop down there to check it out after you get back from the Bermuda Triangle...before the oceans rise over it again.

flash floods would have washed the sediment away long ago.

Not necessarily. Flash floods seldom carry away sediment or topsoil. They usually occur because the ground is either too hard or too saturated to absorb the amount of rain that is falling at the time. Long steady rains are usually requried to lift and carry away sediment or topsoil.

Well, OK. In most instances. (I have seen bare lawns - no grass - no stones- get washed out though) I probably should have stated that it's like the TEXTURE http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=313955&id=844362942 would have been affected by repeated flash flooding, and would not be as it is now.

I do agree with the theory that water and wind are involved, but think that vibration caused by tremors, or small earthquake seismic activity, played a part in some of the movement - not all.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=313965&id=844362942

I think you'd find it interesting to visit the site - things may become clearer when you have an opportunity to walk the entire area and see the different patterns and basin crust. If it was all that simple, it wouldn't still be a mystery though, would it?

Spij,

You say that the stones are still scaring the dry lake bed, and that it has been dry for centuries. And you think that siesmic activity is involved. You assume that stones move simultaneously following different tracks, and that it happens when the temperature is 135 F.

Sounds like you have it all figured out, the mystery is solved!

I am going to get a truckload of these siesmic stones to sell on ebay, they should go like mexican jumping beans.

Your pal, Ace

Ace please reread. Never said anything about temperatures when the stones move, although temperatures do reach 135° during the summer months. It has been a dry lake bed (NOT UNDER WATER) for centuries. Other than that, you're beginning to follow along quite nicely. Feel free to put a shiny star on your homework today.

Let me know when you head that way, I'll be happy to ask the nice ranger man to help you load them up.

You get up on the wrong side of bed, or are you always like that?

Might want to drop down to Juárez one day, and I'll pay for a visit to one of the better parlors - sounds like you're backed up and stressed out. Then you can call me you pal and really mean it.

Not appropreate for me to say but "BRAVO" The sword of Zorro was never sharper.It is good to have friends that can take it a well as give it.

Please come back and walk that lake during the "wet season" Yes it rains here. When it rains the sand does not soak up water it runs off with alot of force. I like the moving rocks of the desert but since Brother Carl Sagan is gone on to the great whatever we will not soon figure this out. For Ace the combination of sand and clay does cause the earth layer just below the water level to be extremely "slippery" so a little slack for our visitor from the south.

This is very interesting. I've read of this before. No answers seem to make sense to me. If it's wind, why doesn't the sand blow around the rocks, like it does everywhere else. If it's ice, and wind, the ground would be frozen and the rocks would leave no trail at all. I've been to Death Valley, but didn't see this stuff. How hard is the ground? Can you kick a hole with your heel? If it's slick, like grease, why would they leave a trail. I really think it's water related. Ya, water would explain everything. It rains, the wind blows, it dries very quickly.

In my view it´s gotta be man made. A hoax like some crazies pulled in the UK cutting geometric patterns in open fields by flattening the grass.

This mystery has been studied for many years, but no one has yet come up with a satisfactory answer. The most popular theory is a combination of flooding and strong winds.

Hmmm, must be a Horta.

Nice Star Trek Reference

And from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

What floats in water?

Very small stones!

It was a giant prehistoric centipede dragging it hind legs. It is not a stone but a piece of toenail.

>>>>I have several other photos of rocks in that vicinity that have obviously moved while plowing trenches as they go.<<<<

Hmmmm, you are assuming that moving rocks caused trenches in the lake bed, and that is an obvious conclusion. But, have you considered that, perhaps, the trenches made the rocks? I'm wondering, if the mass of a rock at the end of a trench equals the mass of the displaced material. Looks like it would be pretty close.

>>>>{Please do not go there and steal stones - some were missing from their groves, and that can be very dissapointing to others that have traveled to visit this site. This site is thousands of years old and still in almost untouched condition.}<<<<

While one may deduce that some visitors to the site have removed stones from their grooves, there might be another explanation. If one considers that grooves make rocks, then it follows that some grooves just haven't got it right, yet.

I thought I saw something about this on tv once. Basically if there is a very small amount of moisture deposited on the mud, the surface of it gets quite slick as the ground is not able to absorbe the water properly. Wind blows...rock slides a bit...moisture dries up, leaving a "dry skid" behind it. It sounded like the balance was having just the right amout of moisture to make things slippery without washing out the old tracks.

GOD did it.

Try this site for your answer. http://www.desertusa.com/mag99/july/stories/race1.html

Thanks for the link, taejonkwando. It's given me a theory. Take a look at one of the rocks from desertusa.

One of the theory's is that the rocks move when the lakebed is slick and is blown by the winds (up to 70mph, according to the text). That does not explain why the rocks have trails that are not parallel, however.

I think that the shape of the rock may have something to do with that. Blowing from one direction, some rocks act like sails and travel at an angle to the wind direction. If the ground conditions change a little (one side is less slick than the other), the rock's orientation could change and it takes a different tack.

Of course, I don't have enough pictures to make a valid conclusion but this one seems plausible for now.

Hi,

this is either freezing and thawing (and related forces as seen on arctic tundras).

or this is heating and cooling with related expansion and contraction and at expansion locking the stone to the ground on one side and at contraction to the other side.

I had a similar effect in a high quality inductive distance pickoff: this was made from posts (3mm dia, 7mm long) that were inserted (shrink fit) 5mm deep into a precision metallic base and the shrink fit secured by epoxi. This moved on thermal cycling only up: the 2 mm above the metallic plate did "grow" with 0.2µm per thermal cycle.

The difference of CTEs had been near 3ppm/K.

With your moving stones this need not be a difference in CTE but a difference in temperature is sufficient.

To clarify you would need a high quality distance measurement device and measure if the stones move in one day or only if freezing was existing. If no freezing never than also crystallisation of salt and dissolution will give similar effects.

RHABE

(I am consulting on difficult effects in precision engineering so this is not too obscure to me, machines and sensors are often more complicated.)

If your only tool is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.

Only to those with no imagination.

I think an overlooked factor is the profile of the rock. The ones pictured on the website in tk's post have a high profile capable of catching a lot of wind. The one in SPIJman's avatar has a lower profile, but has vertical surfaces that can catch wind. If the area in contact with the surface is small enough in relation to the area subject to wind pressure, even small amounts of water on the surface can reduce the friction and allow movement.

This is an excerpt from Wiki about a study of this phenominum.

Professor John Reid led six research students from Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts in a follow-up study in 1995. They found highly congruent trails from stones that moved in the late 1980s and during the winter of 1992-1993. At least some stones were proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have been moved in ice flows that may be up to half a mile (800 m) wide. Physical evidence included swaths of lineated areas that could only have been created by moving thin sheets of ice. So wind alone as well as in conjunction with ice flows are thought to be motive forces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones

Now, there you go again, trying to kill this thread. Good job, Ace. Ya got my vote.

Congradulations, Ace. Well said. Seems like you rested up since your last input.

I was searching for a scientific research project that actually monitored each stone and documented the path - couldn't consider this hadn't been performed yet - but was having difficulty locating anything.

I have been rather busy lately, and haven't had time to properly dig into objects of my own personal curiosity.

Welcome back.

p.s. the parlor offer still holds.

Spij,

It is good to see that you have opened your mind enough to reconsider your small tremors conclusion. You made some incredible statements in the defense of that preconception. I had misidentified you as a zealot, so I am pleasantly surprised that you were persuaded by evidence.

I confess that my threat to sell the stones was purely antagonistic.

p.s. I find your Juarez "parlor" offer to be objectionable and I decline. So treat yourself, and think of me while you enjoy the gift that you are likely to receive.