Tuesday 17 January 2012

Moving rocks of the Racetrack Playa

Image  from wikipedia.org


Image from   www.geology.com

What's not to be in awe of the huge rocks weighing several hundred pounds that move and relocate themselves and leave a track of the path they traveled on ?
What's not to be in awe of two huge and heavy rocks traveling side by side, leaving two distinctively hollow furrows on the dry lake bed; one rocks tires out and decides to rest while the other races past.
Well, I'm talking about the sailing stones/moving rocks of the  Racetrack Playa in the Death Valley of California.
The Racetrack Playa is 3608 feet above the sea level, and  is 4.5 km long by 2 km wide.
The playa/dry mud lake occasionally gets filled by the storm water, which evaporates due to the high  temperatures of the desert  leaving behind polygons of cracked mud mosaics.
Physicists believe that wind and ice could be the factors behind the mysterious movement of the rocks. While several theories attempt to explain the phenomenon , they remain just theories, the phenomenon is still mysterious.



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