The silent racers of Racetrack Playa
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Decades of wild guesses
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The great 2014 breakthrough
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The science of ice sails
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YOUR GOAL
Master of The sailing stones of Death Valley
artiteacher Balance wind and ice to discover how Death Valley's heavy stones stroll.
artiteacher Sailing Stones of Death Valley
When the thin winter ice begins to float, These heavy desert stones drift like a boat.
artiteacher Geologist Stanley Sharp proposed in 1955 that large ice sheets locked around multiple stones, acting like sails in the wind.
Hurricane-force winds: To move a 300-kilogram rock on wet mud without ice, desert winds would need to blow at an impossible 280 kilometers per hour!
artiteacher Some visitors believed that strange magnetic fields or underground metal deposits were pulling the iron-rich stones.
A proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. In 1948, geologists proposed the first scientific hypothesis that dust devils moved the desert's sliding rocks.
What did critics point out about the gravity creep theory for the sailing stones?
Why was the theory of magnetic force pulling the sailing stones eventually disproven?
Why did the early ice sheet theory struggle to explain all sailing stone movements?
What wind speed would desert winds need to reach to move the sailing stones on dry mud alone?
What desert weather phenomenon did Thomas Clement blame for the moving sailing stones in 1953?