A geologic mystery solved! – The sailing stones

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When you write about geology you inevitably come across a couple mysteries that are just unsolved.

In the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley they have many names for this phenomenon.

  • Racing Rocks
  • Sailing Stones
  • Wandering Stone
  • Moving Stones

In the end they were just as puzzling. These rocks were moving without any apparent force moving them. The theories surrounding them were manifold. They included hurricane strength winds blowing and other violent forces that move these rocks.

So geologists did what they do. When you work with rocks you sometimes have to think up the most ridiculous and/or boring experiments. Fitting rocks with GPS and setting them out in the desert is definitely high on the list. However, it did result in time-lapse footage of the rocks moving. It will definitely not what you would expect in a desert.

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Jesper Dramsch

PhD Student at The Way of the Geophysicist
... is a geophysicist by heart. He works at the intersection of machine learning and geoscience. He is the founder of The Way of the Geophysicist and a deep learning enthusiast. Writing mostly about computational geoscience and interesting bits and pieces relevant to post-grad life.
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4 Comments

  1. I only see some text up to the sentence “It will definitely not what you would expect in a desert.”. There’s no other content appearing regarding the topic. Is it my browser or is it the site’s fault?

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