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Author Topic: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved  (Read 10096 times)

KynloStephen66515

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Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« on: August 28, 2014, 04:45 PM »
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Photo credit: Looking north from the south shore of Racetrack Playa on December 20, 2013 at 3:15 pm. Steady, light wind has blown water to the northeast exposing newly formed rock trails / 2014 Norris et al., PLoS ONE

Racetrack Playa is home to an enduring Death Valley mystery. Littered across the surface of this dry lake, also called a “playa,” are hundreds of rocks – some weighing as much as 320 kilograms (700 pounds) – that seem to have been dragged across the ground, leaving synchronized trails that can stretch for hundreds of meters.

What powerful force could be moving them? Researchers have investigated this question since the 1940s, but no one has seen the process in action – until now.

In a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE on Aug. 27, a team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, paleobiologist Richard Norris reports on first-hand observations of the phenomenon.

Because the stones can sit for a decade or more without moving, the researchers did not originally expect to see motion in person. Instead, they decided to monitor the rocks remotely by installing a high-resolution weather station capable of measuring gusts to one-second intervals and fitting 15 rocks with custom-built, motion-activated GPS units. (The National Park Service would not let them use native rocks, so they brought in similar rocks from an outside source.) The experiment was set up in winter 2011 with permission of the Park Service. Then – in what Ralph Lorenz of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University, one of the paper’s authors, suspected would be  “the most boring experiment ever” – they waited for something to happen.

But in December 2013, Norris and co-author and cousin Jim Norris arrived in Death Valley to discover that the playa was covered with a pond of water seven centimeters (three inches) deep. Shortly after, the rocks began moving.

“Science sometimes has an element of luck,” Richard Norris said. “We expected to wait five or ten years without anything moving, but only two years into the project, we just happened to be there at the right time to see it happen in person.” - Continue Reading...




Source Story: https://scripps.ucsd...en-action-first-time
Story Found On: http://www.iflscienc...sliding-rocks-solved

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40hz

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #1 on: August 28, 2014, 05:31 PM »
Cool.... :) ...uh, no :huh:

Bummer!  :(

I kinda liked it more when we didn't really know how it worked.  8)

Some harmless mystery is always nice to have around. ;D

mwb1100

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2014, 05:46 PM »
I agree with 40hz (sorry for what's probably the most boring post on DC).

Stoic Joker

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2014, 06:54 PM »
First the Crystal Skull is declared a fake, and now this!

Earth sucks... :(

superboyac

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2014, 07:21 PM »
Cool.... :) ...uh, no :huh:

Bummer!  :(

I kinda liked it more when we didn't really know how it worked.  8)

Some harmless mystery is always nice to have around. ;D
of all people!   :D

IainB

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2014, 08:46 PM »
Reminds me of the "discovery" of how the ancient Egyptians moved large stones across the desert sands. Pictures in tombs/temples depicted these stones being pulled along by men with ropes, with one person pouring a pitcher of what they thought was probably water just in front of the leading edge of the stone being pulled. Initially, this was thought to be a ceremonial act.
Pulling a heavy object across sand requires an awful lot of work to shift it even a little bit. However, when modern-day investigators got around to trying it out, they found that pouring water just in front of the leading edge of the stone being pulled changed the consistency of the sand and made it act as a kind of lubricant as the rock passed over it, considerably reducing the drag/friction. That principle could well be in action with these "moving rocks" also.
Empiric method. Innit great?
« Last Edit: August 28, 2014, 09:01 PM by IainB »

kunkel321

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #6 on: August 28, 2014, 09:36 PM »
I always wondered about that!   ;D

40hz

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #7 on: August 28, 2014, 09:57 PM »
That principle could well be in action with these "moving rocks" also.
Empiric method. Innit great?

You betcha! Saves endless speculation and "explanations" of how it had to be aliens and UFO technology that made it possible.

This rube has made a career of it:

aliens.jpg

40hz

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #8 on: August 28, 2014, 09:58 PM »
Cool.... :) ...uh, no :huh:

Bummer!  :(

I kinda liked it more when we didn't really know how it worked.  8)

Some harmless mystery is always nice to have around. ;D
of all people!   :D

Wot??? You thought I actually wanted to have all the answers all the time? :huh: ;D

Renegade

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #9 on: August 28, 2014, 10:48 PM »
That principle could well be in action with these "moving rocks" also.
Empiric method. Innit great?

You betcha! Saves endless speculation and "explanations" of how it had to be aliens and UFO technology that made it possible.

This rube has made a career of it:
 (see attachment in previous post)

Huh? But it was. The article is just yet another colossal government cover-up to hide secret Pleiadian anti-gravity technologies that they got from a downed UFO in New Mexico in 1957. (They've been unable to locate the downed spacecraft in the desert in the article - that's the real culprit here! It probably crashed hundreds of years ago and is still pumping out anti-grav fields from it's worm-tractor propulsion drives.)

But that's not the real story - they got a damaged zero-point energy device there as well, but weren't able to fully reverse engineer it until 1983 when they did a secret technology trade with the Russians, who had previously recovered a partially functional ZPE device in Siberia. This all started at the weaponized warfare treaty conference - the one signed in 1977 - but took 6 years to conclude as an additional "weaponized alien technology treaty" (mostly about directed energy weapons) was also needed, and while Jimmy Carter was more amicable, Ronald Reagan demanded harsher conditions, which caused some friction with the Russians, delaying the signing.

And that's just one tiny fragment of the beginning!!!

So you see, it really all was about aliens!  :Thmbsup:

For realz!
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Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Edvard

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #10 on: August 28, 2014, 11:48 PM »
Cool.... :) ...uh, no :huh:

Bummer!  :(

I kinda liked it more when we didn't really know how it worked.  8)

Some harmless mystery is always nice to have around. ;D
of all people!   :D

Wot??? You thought I actually wanted to have all the answers all the time? :huh: ;D

blwq7.jpg

40hz

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #11 on: August 29, 2014, 05:31 AM »
@E - We come in peace! We only seek Ampegs for our young... :P

Stoic Joker

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #12 on: August 29, 2014, 06:39 AM »
That principle could well be in action with these "moving rocks" also.
Empiric method. Innit great?

You betcha! Saves endless speculation and "explanations" of how it had to be aliens and UFO technology that made it possible.

This rube has made a career of it:
 (see attachment in previous post)

Huh? But it was. The article is just yet another colossal government cover-up to hide secret Pleiadian anti-gravity technologies that they got from a downed UFO in New Mexico in 1957. (They've been unable to locate the downed spacecraft in the desert in the article - that's the real culprit here! It probably crashed hundreds of years ago and is still pumping out anti-grav fields from it's worm-tractor propulsion drives.)


Oh Yeah! Much better ...(Damn Heretics)... I'm gonna go with Renegade's version on this - Mystery saved - Good man!

 :D

KynloStephen66515

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #13 on: August 29, 2014, 08:41 AM »
I can never tell whether Renegade is being satirical or serious...

Renegade...you need to get a writing job for The Onion...seriously...if that is Satire, it is very well written in the sense that it looks like the author believes what they are writing...

If not...Then...I don't even know any more  :huh:

lol

Renegade

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #14 on: August 29, 2014, 10:52 AM »
I can never tell whether Renegade is being satirical or serious...

Renegade...you need to get a writing job for The Onion...seriously...if that is Satire, it is very well written in the sense that it looks like the author believes what they are writing...

If not...Then...I don't even know any more  :huh:

lol

Hahaha! 8)

That was all just pure silliness. 40hz beat me to the punch on the alien angle, but I still had to get it in there! :)

However, I did actually mix in some truth there. (Not kidding and not disputable - pure fact.) I'll leave it for people to figure out what the actual true part was! :P

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40hz

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Re: Mystery of Death Valley's Sliding Rocks Solved
« Reply #15 on: August 29, 2014, 02:39 PM »
Ronald Reagan demanded harsher conditions, which caused some friction with the Russians, delaying the signing.

Well yeah....that and the fact he wanted to keep the those odd sigils seen on the experimental German WWII "Bell" device squarely in the hands of Majestic - even after the treaty was signed. The Sovs had a part of the inscription from old photos and previous espionage attempts. But they were missing several sigils on one side of the device that had never been recorded anywhere other than some MX-Ultra classified photos taken shortly after the device was shipped to the United States just before the end of WWII.

Apparently those sigils were absolutely critical for something as the "Kecksburg Acorn" incident in PA seemed to confirm about 20 years later.

 8) ;)