AtmaWeapon
09-19-2007, 10:55 PM
The Racetrack Playa is a relatively uninteresting seasonally dry lake located in Death Valley national park. It does have one unique characteristic though: sailing stones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones).
The rocks seem to get fed up with just sitting around in the same old place and they move. They all seem to have come from a big hill of dark dolomite (not to be confused with Dolemite the dark man) which is important enough to make it into the Wikipedia article. I looked at the dolomite article but it seems like the only really interesting property of the mineral is that it can be a good simultaneous source of the important minerals calcium, magnesium, and lead.
So back to the sailing stones. They move. By themselves (or at least via some force we don't understand). The Wikipedia article points out an interesting theory involving some wind conditions unique to the playa, but there's no conclusion to the research as of today. Of course, scientists have tried pretty hard to explain this phenomenon, but the rocks have a nasty habit of not moving while under observation. Apparently no one has witnessed the stones moving, but it has been proven it's not just an optical illusion. In the 70s, Bob Sharp and Dwight Carey labeled some rocks and marked their locations and used this to track the movements of the rocks over a seven-year period. Though the Wikipedia article seems to indicate that ice floes (which they misspelled) are one of the prevailing theories, Sharp and Carey cast some doubt on this theory by corralling stones in rebar and noting that the stones' movement did not seem to be affected by this interference.
Since scientists are busy doing stupid things like making ray guns (seriously look it up Raytheon has a pain beam) and not hiring homeless people to keep vigilant watch on these rocks so people like me can sleep at night, I'm left to come up with my own solutions to this problem that is a threat to all humanity. Unfortunately, in contemplating some of the most likely solutions, I realize that we'll probably cure cancer before we figure out how a 700 pound rock (her name was Karen, apparently) who stubbornly didn't move during the monitoring period reappeared 800m away in 1994. (Though the ridiculously cruddy quality of the article seems to suggest that Karen wasn't closely monitored during the period of this move. It tries to remove doubt that some pranksters used a truck but I'm certain "It moved sometime before 1994" gives nature a little bit of time to hide the evidence. Seriously who moves a 700 pound rock for fun but the druids?)
Anyway, here's my list of the theories I have tried and exhausted, maybe you guys can come up with some more:
1. God
I turned to the Bible for guidance, but it seems like the Racetrack Playa and actually North America weren't really part of the message God had for us. At least this avenue of research was easy.
God could still be moving the stones to creep us out, but He didn't really leave any evidence behind about it so I'm leaving this explanation alone in search of a better one.
2. Elves
Almost as mysterious as God are elves, we blame a lot on them so I figured maybe they were to blame. However, I noticed that popular legend can't seem to agree on what elves are. Some common contradictory views of the elvish folk are: Midgets that perform slave labor in Santa's workshop. Really tall blonde women with pointy ears who wear skimpy armor and are totally hot. Really arrogant but wise magical creatures that let Liv Tyler hang out with them. Old dudes that make relatively decent cookies.I decided to defer the topic of which of these are really elves and consider them all. The Santa elves can't leave the workshop so obviously they aren't moving the rocks. The hot woman elves are generally too busy posing on the boxes of video games or finding trophy husbands with rare loot; I can't fathom how they'd fit "pushing rocks around a desert" into that schedule. The Middle-Earth elves are long gone so that is out. The Keebler elves are way too small and their elfin magic is focused towards the powers of bakery, so they are out too.
So the verdict on elves is that they are not the cause.
3. Gremlins
We blame a lot on these guys too but I think we can dismiss them rather easily. Gremlins are pretty nasty towards people and like to cause trouble; if the rocks were falling on people's heads there'd be a case for gremlins but so far no one has been anything but mildly annoyed by these rocks.
Gremlins are out.
4. Chuck Norris
is a tired internet meme and I can't believe I'm not editing this option out
5. An undetectable force that is completely impossible to detect but obviously the rocks are moving so it must be this force
This is the most plausible answer. It's something we don't understand and obviously we aren't devoting enough research effort to this cool phenomenon. I mean yeah it's not too important to humanity but neither is the diet of T-rex but we've got dudes with their faces in dirt scraping sand off of bones with toothbrushes right now; why can't we send a few interns out to the playa and tell them they won't get their degrees if they don't tape a rock moving?
This has been a lighthearted and painfully inadequate attempt at comedy on a subject that I find fascinating. I didn't want to just link to the article and be like "what gives", nor did I want to make my "mysterious mysteries" attitude imply I thought some supernatural force was doing this (though supernatural does simply mean some force outside of our comprehension). I don't think we'll know what the devil is going on with these rocks anytime soon because there's a million more important things to study, but it is an oddity of the Earth that is really neat. It makes me sad because I want to know why they are moving but neither the ice floe theory or the wind theory really seems to stack up to me, though I admit I am pretty ignorant of the physics of what kind of wind it takes to move rocks.
*edit* actually after a closer read the ice floe theory does seem a lot more plausible, especially when combined with the wind theory, but it still seems odd that the first experiment seemed to discredit it. I really wish we'd make a conclusive observation :(
*edit 2* Why don't I do the research myself? I'm too busy farming loot so I can catch the eye of one of those scantily-clad she-elves.
The rocks seem to get fed up with just sitting around in the same old place and they move. They all seem to have come from a big hill of dark dolomite (not to be confused with Dolemite the dark man) which is important enough to make it into the Wikipedia article. I looked at the dolomite article but it seems like the only really interesting property of the mineral is that it can be a good simultaneous source of the important minerals calcium, magnesium, and lead.
So back to the sailing stones. They move. By themselves (or at least via some force we don't understand). The Wikipedia article points out an interesting theory involving some wind conditions unique to the playa, but there's no conclusion to the research as of today. Of course, scientists have tried pretty hard to explain this phenomenon, but the rocks have a nasty habit of not moving while under observation. Apparently no one has witnessed the stones moving, but it has been proven it's not just an optical illusion. In the 70s, Bob Sharp and Dwight Carey labeled some rocks and marked their locations and used this to track the movements of the rocks over a seven-year period. Though the Wikipedia article seems to indicate that ice floes (which they misspelled) are one of the prevailing theories, Sharp and Carey cast some doubt on this theory by corralling stones in rebar and noting that the stones' movement did not seem to be affected by this interference.
Since scientists are busy doing stupid things like making ray guns (seriously look it up Raytheon has a pain beam) and not hiring homeless people to keep vigilant watch on these rocks so people like me can sleep at night, I'm left to come up with my own solutions to this problem that is a threat to all humanity. Unfortunately, in contemplating some of the most likely solutions, I realize that we'll probably cure cancer before we figure out how a 700 pound rock (her name was Karen, apparently) who stubbornly didn't move during the monitoring period reappeared 800m away in 1994. (Though the ridiculously cruddy quality of the article seems to suggest that Karen wasn't closely monitored during the period of this move. It tries to remove doubt that some pranksters used a truck but I'm certain "It moved sometime before 1994" gives nature a little bit of time to hide the evidence. Seriously who moves a 700 pound rock for fun but the druids?)
Anyway, here's my list of the theories I have tried and exhausted, maybe you guys can come up with some more:
1. God
I turned to the Bible for guidance, but it seems like the Racetrack Playa and actually North America weren't really part of the message God had for us. At least this avenue of research was easy.
God could still be moving the stones to creep us out, but He didn't really leave any evidence behind about it so I'm leaving this explanation alone in search of a better one.
2. Elves
Almost as mysterious as God are elves, we blame a lot on them so I figured maybe they were to blame. However, I noticed that popular legend can't seem to agree on what elves are. Some common contradictory views of the elvish folk are: Midgets that perform slave labor in Santa's workshop. Really tall blonde women with pointy ears who wear skimpy armor and are totally hot. Really arrogant but wise magical creatures that let Liv Tyler hang out with them. Old dudes that make relatively decent cookies.I decided to defer the topic of which of these are really elves and consider them all. The Santa elves can't leave the workshop so obviously they aren't moving the rocks. The hot woman elves are generally too busy posing on the boxes of video games or finding trophy husbands with rare loot; I can't fathom how they'd fit "pushing rocks around a desert" into that schedule. The Middle-Earth elves are long gone so that is out. The Keebler elves are way too small and their elfin magic is focused towards the powers of bakery, so they are out too.
So the verdict on elves is that they are not the cause.
3. Gremlins
We blame a lot on these guys too but I think we can dismiss them rather easily. Gremlins are pretty nasty towards people and like to cause trouble; if the rocks were falling on people's heads there'd be a case for gremlins but so far no one has been anything but mildly annoyed by these rocks.
Gremlins are out.
4. Chuck Norris
is a tired internet meme and I can't believe I'm not editing this option out
5. An undetectable force that is completely impossible to detect but obviously the rocks are moving so it must be this force
This is the most plausible answer. It's something we don't understand and obviously we aren't devoting enough research effort to this cool phenomenon. I mean yeah it's not too important to humanity but neither is the diet of T-rex but we've got dudes with their faces in dirt scraping sand off of bones with toothbrushes right now; why can't we send a few interns out to the playa and tell them they won't get their degrees if they don't tape a rock moving?
This has been a lighthearted and painfully inadequate attempt at comedy on a subject that I find fascinating. I didn't want to just link to the article and be like "what gives", nor did I want to make my "mysterious mysteries" attitude imply I thought some supernatural force was doing this (though supernatural does simply mean some force outside of our comprehension). I don't think we'll know what the devil is going on with these rocks anytime soon because there's a million more important things to study, but it is an oddity of the Earth that is really neat. It makes me sad because I want to know why they are moving but neither the ice floe theory or the wind theory really seems to stack up to me, though I admit I am pretty ignorant of the physics of what kind of wind it takes to move rocks.
*edit* actually after a closer read the ice floe theory does seem a lot more plausible, especially when combined with the wind theory, but it still seems odd that the first experiment seemed to discredit it. I really wish we'd make a conclusive observation :(
*edit 2* Why don't I do the research myself? I'm too busy farming loot so I can catch the eye of one of those scantily-clad she-elves.