Mystery of Death Valley's Moving Stones Solved
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- čas přidán 28. 08. 2014
- For decades, scientists have been trying to solve Death Valley's mystery of the "moving stones." Now, two scientists say they have figured out what makes the rocks move on the desert floor. WSJ's Monika Auger reports.
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The pioneers used to ride these babies for miles!
yes yes yes 😰 hahah 😂 😂
It was the precursor to the automobile.
And they are in great shape
Crusty crab pizza is the pizza for you and meeeeeee.
gaminghero109 thank you for posting this! You’re now my favorite person
It's all the abandoned pet rocks trying to go home like lassie.
It's like alligators flushed down toilets only to become a menace in the sewers of New York. Thanks to these feckless pet rock owners, now we have feral rocks roaming the streets - sometimes in groups in bands conglomerating with each other. They're rock bands.
"I've fo⅃Lowed you on many adventures...but into the great 🇺🇳known mystery, I go first, Indy!"
―Wu Han[src]19Ɛ34
Explanation is at 1:45-2:00 large sheets of thin ice afloat of a few inches of water are pushed by strong winds. The leading edge of this ice sheet is what contacts and pushes the rocks along. The rocks coefficient of friction is small as the playa underneath is flat slick mud.
Depending on the leading edge width of the ice sheet a number of rocks are pushed simultaneously in same direction which accounts for parallel tracks (as at 0:51-:53). The direction and speed of the wind and total area of ice sheet direct the vector forces moving the rocks.
I would surmise that to move a 700 lb. rock would take perhaps acres of ice sheet & strong steady winds.
I use to survey near Death Valley the weather extremes there are amazing. We once had to abandon a survey job because the ground fog was so thick we lost sight of our line points only 10 yds away. (December)
I was thinking that, "so how much fucking ice would you need to push heavy stones??"... So, is it true after all? Seems weird to me because water can't go underneath a heavy rock, it would not nullify friction like that, and the force from the ice sheet would have to be enormous to really move anything, and 200ft??
Thanks
contact me by email please. I think you and I could solve one of the worlds greatest mysteries. If you cant contact me i will so shocked and dissapointed. lol. so please eightonetwo6for7sietatricinco7
They should have used this explanation in video maybe with some 3D visualization. Video is very bad at explaining this phenomenon.
@@ScienceDiscoverer : I agree that the explanation in this video was very poor.
Everyone talking about the rocks, but I’m confused why there’s ice in Death Valley.
Only thing I can think of is how deserts tend to get extremely cold at night. Think it has to do with the open sky let’s the sunshine in the day to heat the place but all the heat escapes the area and the ground at night. Especially since there isn’t any trees to hold in or capture that heat and keep it from rising up into the air. Cool air sits lower and when your that low below sea level. Maybe ice just forms.
Cool situation though.
@@Jazzatic2011 you're right. It gets really cold there at night just as it's one of the hottest places on earth during day.
It's gonna be 25 degrees there tonight. I'm heading there before sunrise tomorrow. Burr
It wouldn't be possible without a camera to observe the rocks actually move. This has fascinated me ever since I first saw it. Congratulations to you.
It happens on our glass coffee table. When it gets wet, and we have the electricfan on, sometimes our bowls & mugs start to slide. At first, I was so shocked, but later I found out why 😂
The explanation of the moving rocks is as fascinating as the mystery once was
wow Patrick's pet rocky sure have many families here.
I can remember as a young punk kid in grade school discussing how these rocks moved. We came to the conclusion it was a combination of ice, water, and most importantly, wind. This was back in the late 60's. So, this is old news.
@ClearlyNotYou Guess I showed my age.
@@terrylong8465 the factors are : ice, water, wind and slippery slimy mud on which the rocks sit. And the slippery mud is the most important factor, not the wind.
Rova without the wind they’re not moving
@@rova3308 All factors are required and as such no factor is more important than any other.
I was thinking the same..old news. Yes no doubt it’s cool, however there are numerous examples of ways in which water has and will continue to show mankind we are but mere mortals here on earth.
To be honest, with where we have come in geology I’m surprised this is being labeled so dramatically, as if scientists have been frustrated for years about it! Seriously? Put a drone out and film..is it really that difficult? Have we all not seen Natgeo film some pretty cray stuff in really intense places?!
If that is the case, and this is in fact fresh information that is going into “the books” after decades of questioning why-then im skeptical.
Why make a big deal about it now, why the poor videos, why not have better reasoning for others questions in the comments here like (movement in summer & ice w/ larger stones .)
Possibly something is trying to be hidden by regurgitation of science from decades ago making its way into pop culture now. A group of geologists simply rediscovered something old, and not well cataloged maybe? In todays online world they can market it as subject that has been years in question, as they market it on the internet as this, “oooohhh ..huge discovery years in the making? Maybe. Idk
I looked this up because my taxi driver today brought it up to me, and was going on and on about the “sailing stones and how “scientists have finally figured out how they move”.” It sounded like something I had heard of before, but I hadn’t remembered anything called
Sailing Stones. Here I am.
It’s cool, and interesting no doubt!
It simply doesn’t seem like a question that could never be answered until recently.
spongebob rode these rocks in one of his episodes
OHMYGOD. THIS REFERENCE. That show is genius in so many levels.
XD ya i saw that one XDXDXDXDXD
The krusty krab pizza is the pizza for you and me
Omg i literally thought the same. 🤣
Just thought that too lol 😆
Love Death Valley! Used to go almost every year in January when the weather is perfect! So many natural oddities to see there.
A 2 minute CZcams search would saved a lot of time and money. A video uploaded in 2006 shows the rocks being moved by the melting ice.
which video are you referring to specifically
@@madpriest7822 It might have been this one, but I'm not sure. czcams.com/video/u1hoiHvOeGc/video.html
Generally rain fall will flow into the basin, and cold temps will cause it to freeze and wind picks up. It’s basically perfect weather phenomena.
legend has it this is where the Rolling Stones got their name
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR EXPENSIVE INFORMATIONS TO GROW MORE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT ANCIENT SECRETS.
lies, it was the pioneers
Them sliding on ice makes sense, however it doesn’t explain the movement in the summer where the rocks still move and no ice is present during those months. I don’t know why, I just know Mother Nature is pretty awesome!
There's ice in Death Valley in the summer.
It still drops below freezing many times in the dead of summer because of the low humidity, clear sky, and the sky as a heat sink. Water can freeze in a pool in the desert with the ambient air temperature as high as 50F due to the heat sink effect of a clear sky with no/low humidity.
It is a trick backpackers use to make ice cream and ice. Paint a hiking cup black on the outside, and leave the top exposed to the clear night sky in a meadow, and voille you have ice in the morning, even with night time temperature as high as 50F due to evaporation of water taking heat with it into the night sky.
Now that I see it, I feel dumb for never having considered it. It's such an obvious thing we should have hypothesized at some point considering it's happening on dry lake beds where it rains enough for standing water sometimes.
It took two years of waiting with high-tech cameras and gps devices attached to the rocks to finally see the phenomenon happen. Imagine if they just had a guy sit there looking at the stones every day. How long would it have taken for him to see it happen? Would anyone have believed him?
The skull with the horns is a prop.
They realized it was their cousin Chuck moving the stones with his mind 😂
The first time I heard about moving stones was in a spongebob episode
Finally! When I was young, the whole "rocks moving by themselves" thing scared the mess outa me haha.
YOU ARE not by yourself, me too. this was spooky for me as a child
Humans: rocks are non living things.
Rocks in Death Valley: Let's play tag?
film one of those 600lbs. rocks sailing along, THEN i'll be impressed!
exactly
they should move much slower i would assume. you might not be as impressed as you think.
+chris anthony yeah that would take decades lol the ;larger ones move so slow its barely noticeable
during ww2 the military owned all the desert land. and had training bases all over the desert. look it up. the rocks were placed where ever a tank was found during the clean up after ww2 was over. the pushed rocks with whatever equipment they used to remove the old tanks that they found. look it up they had over 200000 troops throughout the desert, and they made sure there presence was known! rocks dont move people!! unless someone moves them... the Government will tell you the rocks move becuase there not gonna tell you they had to clean up there mess in the middle of the desert...
what of the marks left by the "equipment"? what sector of the multifaceted government "will tell me " why do you expect anyone to believe you when you say when you don't give any details specifics anything other than anecdote. and if your trolling good troll nice and nebulous. if your not trolling then google "Lenny Pozner" and i hope it helps free you from delusion.
I love the cow's skull at the 7 second mark. Those are always great for establishing shots of a desert. I always wonder when I see that "Where's the rest of the cow?" Why isn't the rest of the skeleton with the head? How did just a HEAD appear in the desert?
It travelled on a thin sheet of ice
My buddy Eric put it there
The pioneers, it was the damn pioneers
Though the mystery is explained it’s remarkable that this set of circumstances could come together and occur naturally. How many other mysteries are just the same?
My friend said in St.Andrew's NB the rocks moved on their own on a beach.
ohh pioneers use to ride those babies for miles, and they are in great shape!
Galactus Mancs good job you retyped the top comment here's a cookie for your unoriginality
Zecr great thanks!
here's a cookie for your unoriginality [2]
Spongebob lol
When I was little, I used to think these stones were possessed by spirits xD
Ah well, it's like I say, the answer is always less interesting than the mystery.
More fun than this explanation
Science is way more fun than superstition.
Was just at The Racetrack a few weeks ago. it's incredible to see all the rocks with the long 'skid marks' behind them.. Just be on the lookout for 'fakes' that people plant out there.
It's not just a boulder it's a rock!
The desert averages seven nights a year of freezing weather, which can occur in December, January and February. Any overnight frost normally thaws the next day, as daytime highs are typically always above 32 degrees. It’s interesting that miners reported the rocks moving on dry land over a century ago, but then the “Geologist” states his theory of the rocks moving after it rains and freezes.... In my opinion, this topic deserves research led by “Expert(s)”.....
Their wrong. The rocks grow legs and walked away. Then they hid their legs again like turtles😝
They're wrong lol
sadly someone has ruined this place by driving their car on the area
Looks like it. A handful of the stones have been vandalised and stolen.
cat ffs
Dont worry, the tracks will be gone after the next rain storm..although, that could take a while..
Is it really that fragile? Can't the environment just naturally go back to the same conditions eventually?
Yeah after a few hundred years
George Stanley figured out it was windblown ice foes in 1955. "Origin of Playa Stone Tracks, Racetrack Playa, Indo County, California," bulletin of the Geology Society of America, November 1966.
in romania theres a tourist spot where are some stones called grannys that grow every year , this is the same , the tracks are just old.
Crazy
Ice is always screwing with rocks. Should've known.
+1971SuperLead icefilms is a great way to watch tv and movies
It’s probably the frequency that’s emitting underground that makes the stone moves.
Ice is more believable then that
The stones move because the water under them makes them move i actually remembered it,my brother was watching something like this in 2016
In Netherlands there are rocks from Scandinavia, 2000 kilometers away. They are moved by ice from the ice age 10.000 years ago.
This is cool but i actually chuckled a little when they said they put cameras on the rocks 😅
Great explanation if all rocks moved, I've seen where large rocks had moved while smaller ones sit still so keep searching for the real store.
Could be the ice flows over smaller rocks but larger rocks get caught in the ice and dragged along with it.
has an archaeologist thought that they could also move stones differently ???
in the past she used horses and elephants, but thousands of years earlier there were larger animals, maybe she used them, not all animals are aggressive, look how much weight you move with a paraceratherium was a kind of rhinoceros even bigger than a giraffe, with 4 of those animals you move those blocks, just look what animals we tame, horses, elephants, donkeys, cow, ox, and that was also to work
Oh snap
Rocks have lives. Some rocks grow and bread. Some rocks walk. In a religion in 3 century BC, it is told that that trees and rocks have life. So some rocks may have life and can walk
Yesterday, i set down a glass on my granite countertop. The granite was wet, as was the cup. When I put the cup down nothing special happened, but a minute later I reached to pick up the glass and then changed my mind, with the glass never really leaving the countertop. Two seconds later that I notice the glass is sliding. Its not sliding from the momentum of me almost picking it up. Its bubbling at the bottom rim of the glass. The bubble popped once every second or two, and every time the bubble popped it would slide the glass a centimeter. I watched this go on for 2 minutes or so and the glass had moved 12 -14 inches. It stopped when the glass got to an area of the counter top that wasnt wet. First thing that came to my mind was these rocks, but it doesn't seem to be the same process. Very Similar but different.
I can't find it, but there's a video of Spanish speaking news casters watching a glass slide on its own, on a glass table. It was on a countdown list of potential paranormal occurrences, on top 15s, top 5 unknowns, or chills. I'm pretty sure that glass moved for the same reasons my glass moved...does this process have a name? Or has it been fully defined?
He is a BOSS 🙌
so.. the moving rock in that one spongebob episode makes sense now
Anyone from Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Michigan could have quickly solved this mystery. All you need is heavy winds during ice-out and you get massive damage on lake shores.
it's a patrick rock
cool
I remember Spongebob at episode Pizza Delivery
And there was people believing that, those moving rocks, was God playing curling against aliens.
The wind blows them across the ice? Sounds wrong to me.
specially the last image they show is really weird - as many other I saw in all those videos!! well, sometimes it's sliding, and these stones are really having fun!!
Gama Isora yeah you're right! and how come they left these deep traces on the ground if they where on top of ice!! scientists lie to themselves every time they cant figure out something, it fine to say I DON'T KNOW!
Totally!! Most of all: I've seen them trying to reproduce it in a labolatory, with smaller stones on a piece of icy ground, with something to make a 'wind' stronger and stronger;; And at the end they are trully blowned away, but the don't slide , just a little before being blowned, that's when they put the wind at is max,if not them don't move at all!!
These tracks are nothing but usual, but I don't know what it is!!
At th end she says: "if we 'd know, it would lost its interes 't,so that§
Hung895 well I know: at the time of Moses the Prophet; guys where taking shower together and seeing their naked bodies, but Moses was a respected and very shy man and was taking his shower separately away from them, so they started a rumor that Moses Body is deformed and his skin is extremely ugly, this hurt Moses a lot but still he didn't take show with them, one day God decided to shut them up, when Moses was taking a shower he put his cloths on a a stone next to him, so God ordered that stone to move and Moses was ruining after it till he found himself between the other showering man and they just got amazed by the beauty and fitness of his body...stones are living creatures like us but different, they move, they pray!, this is what the prophet Mohammed told us, and now science proved that Yes, stones move!
Mozes,Mohammed??
Moving rocks.... is God playing chess?.... who's wining?
Justin Blk meh, it was more of a joke since i don't believe in a God either
the devil is winning
Demons are moving them!
Olimpiu-Theodor Morar aaa it's not a joke 😐😐😐
haha
good
Chuck Norris solved it!
Chuck Norris didn't solve it. The shock waves from his kicks made them move.
Chuck Norris just walked towards them in a menacing stance. Poor rocks run off in panic. I can understand that...
micmul23 chuck made eye contact
Lex Ellis yes I solved
How do they change directions like they are going straight then they turn
Patrick was not kidding
It’s not a boulder, it’s a rock!
This is how we use to move the stones to build the pyramid.^_^
Somewhere in the southwest...
very funny theory
2010's and the best footage they could come up with is a few still frames?
It is a real phenomenon
Not to be that person but why did this take them so long to figure out? Like no one put a camera out there until 2014? I literally learned this in geology 101, it's how glaciers move...I don't know it seems like a natural assumption to make rather than waiting however long it took them to figure this out.
Is rock has some metallic substance?
How much does it cost to see it first hand its on my death list i would love to see them move with my own eyes maybe get video and photos . i been wanting to see it
Over 30 years if isfree i want to go
The pioneers ride these babies everywhere
tx , it make sense!!!
I just figured out how the pyramids were built. must have been quite a strong breeze to get that cap stone up there.
*When you see two identical rocks there*
*L A U G H*
if it is the ice how can you explain the trails on the surface?
What do you think happens when you drag a rock across the ground. It leaves a trail. It didn’t just hover off the ground. Ice melted under it which caused to move. It didn’t leave the ground it just moved from its original position.
Some say it's because of one fucking reason, others say it's some other fucking reason.
Thats a good fucking point man, they need to just not fucking argue about this fucking bullshit, this is fucking annoying, Im FUCKING triggered
Thought rain fall would be involved somehow but not like that
Rocks moving isn't itself strange. This is just a case where we have obvious visual evidence that the rocks move, and since we think of them as inanimate it's strange. In New England the soil is very rocky and the climate is damp. Farmers would perform back breaking labor to remove stones from the ground so that they could plow their fields, and then after the spring thaw the stones in the ground would move in the mud and they would have to remove new stones every year. They used the stones to make short boundary walls and vegetable cellars. In the first half of the 19th century New England's farmers mostly got tired of that crap and moved to the fertile plains of the Midwest. The industrial revolution put even more farms on poor soil out of business and forests have reclaimed most of the formerly cultivated land in the region. That's why if you walk through the woods in Massachusetts today it's full of stone walls.
as my ancestors did...left Massachusetts and Connecticut to go to Michigan in the 1800's
Sorry but the ice and wind have nothing to do with rock movement. The water undermines the flat bottom rock and the thin layer of "Silt" which is very slick washes away underneath the rock forming a small slope and the rock slides forward at a snails pace. I believe there is like a 4 degree slope were the water flows as you can see in the film. This movement leaves a trail much like a clam does on lake beds. This silt is so fine that when it is baked by the sun it flakes and remains there until the next rainy season. Yes, I have seen Mother Nature do her thing with rocks in other parts of the world. In a nut shell it is nothing more than natures selective order. Still a Phenomenon!
I still don't buy this explanation. Some things still don't make sense to me.
1. The ice-sheets should break as they hit the stones as the ice is fairly thin as i get it, and thus there shold be no "sails" to push the rocks?
2. If i understand correctly there are even pebble sized rocks leaving trails? If so why are there no trails from the ice-sheets them selves blowing around there? They should leave marks too imo.
That's two things i can think of right of the bat. Might be more but those two bugs me the most. Maybe you guys can shed some light on those thoughts?
What I want to know is , just exactly WHO is bringing all that ice to Death Valley in the first place ???
I'm going to guess that the moisture is absorbed into the porous rocks and freezes during cold nights, causing the stones to become smooth, and then they slide along the sand from friction.
Edit: Huh, Ice sheets...
I don't know why but I prefer this not to be solved. It is a beautiful mystery and now its been reduced and quantified down to a project with a check mark of completion. That's sad.
if it is ice and water. why are the trails left behind, not washed away by the water or blown away by the winds?
Maybe because it's not allot of water? And the trail is too deep for the light wind to cause major change in it's shape
tldr it was an old hippie named Greg wearing really big bunny slippers that don't leave footprints. the trails match cause, while Greg did cure his alcoholism with LSD, the LSD gave him OCD. But like the OCD where you like things to be just a certain way. so like he pushes rocks good. anyway.
Book ooh,!!!!!!
half there..how about the stones that move in near perfect circles?
The Rolling Stones.✌🎸🇺🇸🇬🇧
"She's So Cold"
So they were there watching it happen... and no one took a video of it??
But thats what it always was, ever since i first read about it , it wss a fascinating natural phenomenon ( like seasons or the tide)but not a mystery
Same thing happens in Minnesota. Don’t try observing that though it’s private property.
ayo isn't that the stone that spongebob rode that ran over squidward
I’m just surprised that with cameras being around for a long time, it took this long to solve
It didn’t. This was solved decades ago. Everyone just tries to pretend this is a mystery to clickbait views from idiots.
Literally years ago I said wind is what did this. Yes a bit of ice helped but obviously wind was a factor. Rocks don't get up and walk.
Wind hahaha genius
IT WAS GAWD!
If they are moving on ice then why are they leaving traces on the land?
The Rock would have froze in place when the lake froze and if you have a sheet of ice you don't push up mud on each side they could have laid the rocks on top of the ice after it froze and then recorded and I put their own rocks out there it's just too illogical to think The Rock didn't freeze in place when the lake froze
"DOH!" --Unsolved Mysteries
Its the pioneers