Death Valley's moving rocks finally caught moving

[gturner]

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyHcs7B27Zk[/yt]

LiveScience link

The plain fills up with shallow water, which freezes into thin ice, and then as the ice starts to break up the wind driven ice slabs push the rocks around.

That was simple.

 

[Metryq]

Slow motion Olympic curling in Death Valley. Come back in 4 years—no, better make that 8.

 

[publiusr]

I was hoping it was some type of freak wind current from the surrounding geology. The ice forms a sail.

I wonder if that can be scaled up to move larger objects.

 

[Metryq]

I was hoping it was some type of freak wind current from the surrounding geology. The ice forms a sail.

I wonder if that can be scaled up to move larger objects.

That's when it will turn out the Egyptian pyramids were built with ice tools. Figure that one out!

 

[gturner]

I was hoping it was some type of freak wind current from the surrounding geology. The ice forms a sail.

I wonder if that can be scaled up to move larger objects.

Yes it can, but you're getting into glaciers, ice flows, and such.

 

[E-DUB]

Most rocks just stay put. These must be a little bolder.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Most rocks just stay put. These must be a little bolder.

I'd take it for granite.

 

[Metryq]

This pun-ishment is graveling.

 

[Silvercrest]

They can't help themselves; puns are dirt cheap.

But if they can't get back to the topic, things will get rocky.

 

[MacLeod]

Was in Death Valley the other week, hot and toastie.

 

[Metryq]

Imagine if this whole thing turned out to be another "crop circle" type hoax. Every time some super-science expert came up with an explanation, such as why the patterns were always clockwise circles (Foucault hay proving that the Earth rotates!), the pranksters would go out and make a counter-clockwise square.

Now imagine some smart-alecks shoving the rocks a little bit each night, somehow avoiding the cameras.