DBT

"These rocks definitely move. Since the playa lakebed is essentially dried mud, the trails of these buggers can be clearly seen. As the rocks move, they create long, shallow furrows that trail behind. The larger boulders can form trails that are up to 200 feet long. The smaller, more lightweight rocks can move over 600 feet in a single advance."

CanoeMan

Heh, I thought this was a thread about the joys of tourism.

Why doesn't anybody set up camp near one of these rocks and just wait until it moves? Surely there are at least one scientist bored and curious enough to spend a couple of months doing this?

DBT

Not that it's all that important, but you'd think someone would at least set up a time lapse camera.
My first thought was that it was the work of pranksters, as with crop circles,etc.

NZSkep

I love these kind of unexplained things. I hate it when people think it's martians. I mean, Aliens moved some rocks? wtf? some sort of intergalacticmarbles game?

Kydka

Apparently two guys already did try to figure it out. "One scientist, Dr. Robert P. Sharp, supports this theory. Sharp, a professor of geology at the California Institute of Technology embarked on a seven-year study of this curious wonder. He tagged the positions of thirty stones and watched them for about one year. He recorded the weather conditions after each move. To no one's surprise, all but two of them moved in the directions of the prevailing winds. A nine-ounce stone moved 690 feet in one giant slide. Another stone moved 860 feet in a series of moves.

Another geologist, John Reid, has come up with an alternative theory. Reid was out on a field trip with a group of students back in 1991. They arrived to Racetrack Playa right after melting snows had left about five centimeters of water on the lakebed. The mud formed from this meltwater was downright slippery - one of his students slid between five and six meters. But when Reid tried to move modest sized rocks (25 kg), they wouldn't budge. From this he concluded that the wind could not solely move the rocks (yet a 200 pound person easily slides along with no wind?). "

At first I also thought that was a thread that probably belonged in general disucssion and then that this was a prank and worried that it would involve aliens or gods, hehe.

Luci

You mean like building the pyramids in Egypt?

NZSkep

thats more like intergalactic lego