May 24, 2012

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The Sailing Stones of Death Valley

A sailing stone. Photo credit Wiki

A geological phenomenon has been observed and studied for the last 50 years that has yet to be explained. In the dry lake bed of Racetrack, Death Valley, stones as big as 700 pounds, mysteriously slide across the surface without any physical manipulation by man or beast. These stones have become known as the Sailing Stones.

Although these stones have been studied for the last fifty years, no one has seen these stones actively sliding.

Some researchers believe a combination of natural events cause these stones to “sail”.  This area of Death Valley can get very frigid in the winter nights, causing a layer of ice to form on the baked smooth soil.  The combination of the ice coated ground and fierce winds, the rocks are gently pushed across the surface.  The winds are indeed fierce, as they have been known to clock up to 90 mph during the winter months.

A Sailing Stone course change. Photo credit: Jon Sullivan

Other researchers question this theory.  Some point the conditions have to be just right for these stones to move, perhaps occurring once every one to three years.  They claim some other unknown factor is probably in play.

To add more to this strange phenomenon, these sailing stones don’t follow a specific path that could be predicted when ice and wind are present.  Some stones that are physically near each other may start out sailing in a parallel direction, but then one would stop while the other one continues.  Some have started sailing in a parallel direction, but then suddenly one would turn left or right and continue on in that direction.  There are some stones that have reversed course while others have continued on in a straight path.  To make matters even more complicated, some stones have completely turned over while continuing to sail across the dry lake bed.

Their paths have ranged up to hundreds of feet long and the path indentation is less than an inch deep.

Wind and ice may play a pivotal role in these sailing stones, but their random paths lead one to question what other forces are at work in moving these sailing stones of Death Valley.

References
The Racetrack in Death Valley
Sailing Stones (Wikipedia)

Jim H was born and raised in Naples, Italy. He created this website in December 2009 because of his fondness for historical mysteries. Since creating the website, Historic Mysteries has grown incredibly fast and over 200 mysteries are now documented on this site. Thank you for visiting and please bookmark this site.
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Comments

  1. 4
    Ron says:

    There is no spoon.
    Either that or James Dean’s ghost.

  2. 3
    sahan aloka says:

    It is fantastic and weird. I think every thing in the earth is moving relative to earth but their movements can not identified because there we can not see a difference. But in racetracks we can see traces because they can not erase

  3. 2
    m.mobel says:

    Cool I wouldn’t be surprised if someone in the real world is actually tapping into the floating stones without even knowing it..I mean we are using what 10% of ours known brain power?Maybe someone living in the city/wherever is concentrating on something doesn’t realize he/she is moving a large stone somewhere out there..I mean that is how the islanders say the large rocks floated over to nan madol

  4. 1

    Really weird, interesting and fantastic! I think it is great that even today with our vast technology, there are things that we do not understand our planet.