The silent racers of Racetrack Playa
Decades of wild guesses
The great 2014 breakthrough
The science of ice sails
What desert weather phenomenon did Thomas Clement blame for the moving sailing stones in 1953?
What did critics point out about the gravity creep theory for the sailing stones?
artiteacher Balance wind and ice to discover how Death Valley's heavy stones stroll.
artiteacher Some visitors believed that strange magnetic fields or underground metal deposits were pulling the iron-rich stones.
What wind speed would desert winds need to reach to move the sailing stones on dry mud alone?
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.
Why did the early ice sheet theory struggle to explain all sailing stone movements?
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!
Why was the theory of magnetic force pulling the sailing stones eventually disproven?
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.