Who Discovered Sailing Using Stones Fallies?

A team of researchers has captured images of the rocks in motion, which have puzzled scientists for nearly a century. Most theories suggest that dust devils caused the strange movement, but in December 2013, Richard and Jim Norris discovered that the playa was covered with a pond of water seven centimeters deep. The sailing stones of Death Valley, massive rocks weighing up to 320 kilograms, scraped out tracks as long as 224 meters in parallel on Racetrack Playa, a cracked lakebed in Death Valley.

Researchers have guessed at the forces moving the rocks since they were discovered nearly a century ago, but no one had seen them move until last December. The sailing stones, or sliding stones, have been observed and studied since the early 1900s. One man believes he has solved the puzzle: Joseph Stromberg.

After over seventy years of attempts, U.S. researchers led by Dr. Brian Jackson of the USGS discovered the phenomenon of the sailing rock in 1915. They heard the ice crack and saw the rocks begin to sail. James Norris captured the final piece needed, and their photographs became the final piece needed to solve the mystery.

The sailing stones, or sliding stones, of Racetrack Playa have been observed and studied since the early 1900s.

Who discovered the sailing stones?

But in December 2013, Norris and co-author James Norris (of Interwoof and Richard’s cousin) arrived in Death Valley to discover that the playa was covered with a shallow pond no more than 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.”

Their observations show that moving the rocks requires a rare combination of events. First, the playa fills with water, which must be deep enough to allow formation of floating ice during cold winter nights but shallow enough to expose the rocks. As nighttime temperatures plummet, the pond freezes to form sheets of “windowpane” ice, which must be thin enough to move freely but thick enough to maintain strength. On sunny days, the ice begins to melt and break up into large floating panels, which light winds drive across the playa pool. The ice sheets shove rocks in front of them and the moving stones leave trails in the soft mud bed below the pool surface.

What are some interesting facts about the sailing stones of Death Valley?

Not all of the stones in Death Valley move. Those that do only move every two to three years, and they don’t all move at the same time or in the same direction. In fact, some seem to have made abrupt 90-degree turns, judging from the tracks, which range from tens of feet to hundreds of feet long. Most of the stones are not huge boulders but instead range from about 6 to 18 inches (15 to 45 centimeters) in diameter.

Several theories have been proposed to explain this curious phenomenon, including some sort of localized, unknown magnetic effect. This theory has been discounted for a variety of reasons including that many of the stones do not contain significant amounts of magnetic elements such as iron, and that the stones should gradually assemble in one place — which they don’t. Some have suggested that the strong winds that blow through the area might move the rocks after the lakebed has become slick.

The most likely solution to the mystery involves a combination of wind, temperature and water. Although Racetrack Playa is a dry lakebed, it is not always dry; in fact, water collects on the surface after rainfall or when snow from surrounding peaks melts. Brian Dunning, a California researcher who discussed this mystery on his Skeptoid podcast, notes that when water is present and the temperature falls below freezing — as it sometimes does — a thin sheet of ice is created: “Solid ice, moving with the surface of the lake and with the inertia of a whole surrounding ice sheet, would have no trouble pushing a rock along the slick muddy floor… As the wind shifts and the flow ebbs, these ice floes drag the rocks across the slippery mud surface in zig-zagging paths, even moving heavy rocks and sometimes dragging some but washing past others nearby.”

How the sailing stones of the devil’s racetrack in Death Valley are thought to move?

Reinforcing the “ice raft” theory, a research study pointed out narrowing trails, intermittent springs, and trail ends having no rocks. The study identified that water drained from higher area into the Playa while ice covered the intermittent lake. This suggests that this water buoyantly lifts the ice floes with embedded rocks until friction with the playa bed is reduced sufficiently for wind to move them and cause the observed tracks. The study also analyses an artificial ditch intended to prevent visitors from driving on the playa, and concludes that it may interfere with rock sliding.

In 2020, NASA ruled out the potential reasons for the stones moving results from the microbial mats and wind-generated water waves based on a fossil of dinosaur footprints.

News articles reported the mystery solved when researchers observed rock movements using GPS and time-lapse photography. The largest rock movement the research team witnessed and documented was on December 20, 2013 and involved more than 60 rocks, with some rocks moving up to 224 metres (245 yards) between December 2013 and January 2014 in multiple movement events. These observations contradicted earlier hypotheses of strong winds or thick ice floating rocks off the surface. Instead, rocks move when large ice sheets a few millimeters thick floating in an ephemeral winter pond start to break up during sunny mornings. These thin floating ice panels, frozen during cold winter nights, are driven by light winds and shove rocks at up to 5 m/min (0.3km/h; 0.2 mph). Some GPS-measured moves lasted up to 16 minutes, and a number of stones moved more than five times during the existence of the playa pond in the winter of 2013–14.

What are the facts about sailing rocks?

This dolomite composes nearly all stones found in the southern half of the playa, and originates at a steep promontory, 260m (850ft) high, paralleling the east shore at the south end of the playa. Intrusive igneous rock originates from adjacent slopes (most of those being tan-colored feldspar-rich syenite). Tracks are often up to 330ft (100m) long, about 8 to 30cm (3 to 12in) wide, and typically much less than 2.5cm (1in) deep. Most moving stones range from about 15 to 46cm (6 to 18in) in diameter.

Stones with rough bottoms leave straight striated tracks, while those with smooth bottoms tend to wander. Stones sometimes turn over, exposing another edge to the ground and leaving a different track in the stone’s wake.

Trails differ in both direction and length. Rocks that start next to each other may travel parallel for a time, before one abruptly changes direction to the left, right, or even back to the direction from which it came. Trail length also varies – two similarly sized and shaped rocks may travel uniformly, then one could move ahead or stop in its track.

A balance of specific conditions is thought to be needed for stones to move:

Who solved the mystery of the sailing stones?

In a statement, Richard D. Norris and his cousin James M. Norris said that the rock movements occurred during a rare combination of conditions in winter. There had to be a shallow layer of water in the dry lake bed and nighttime temperatures cold enough for the formation of a thin layer of ice. On sunny days, melting caused the ice to break into large floating panels that, driven by light winds, pushed against the rocks to move them. Of course, this will leave tracks on the desert floor. The editor- and peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE published their study.

The video above – from the Slithering Stones Research Initiative – shows a sailing or sliding or slithering stone of Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa in motion. See it? It’s the big rock in the foreground.

How they studied the sailing stones. The two cousins launched their investigation of sailing stones in 2011. That’s when they founded what they called the Slithering Stones Research Initiative. They established a weather station near Racetrack Playa and added 15 of their own stones to the playa. The added stones had GPS tracking units attached.

Who discovered sailing?

The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Babylonians are believed to have been the first civilizations to make use of these sailing vessels. Although there is no evidence that the Egyptians were the first builders of these vessels, they were the first to leave written documents about navigation and ships.

The first element used to build these sailing vessels was papyrus, a material that grew abundantly on the banks of the Nile. Thanks to papyrus, boats were created that were used to cross the river from one bank to the other, even for other activities such as fishing. These rudimentary vessels soon evolved, as when the papyrus was submerged it lost its consistency and the vessel suffered.

There is no doubt that the invention of sailing was the most important event in the history of navigation and, due to the impact and importance it had, work was done on its development over the years.

What is the theory behind sailing?

Another important resistive force comes from vortex generation at the bottom of the keel and at the top of the sails. When the air or water moves around the longer-path side of the sail or keel, its speed increases and therefore its pressure falls. As the air or water moves along the sail or keel, it will respond to the resulting pressure difference by trying to migrate from the high-pressure side to the low-pressure side. Figure 2 sketches that effect for a keel. What actually happens, as shown in the figure’s side view, is that the flow angles a bit up on one side and down on the other. When those flows meet at the back of the sail or keel, the difference in their arrival angles has a twisting effect on the fluid flow that can cause a vortex to come off the top of the sail or the bottom of the keel.

Figure 2. Vortex formation by the keel. Unless the boat is sailing straight ahead, there’s a pressure difference between the two sides of the keel. As a result, the water flow angles down on the high-pressure (lower water-speed) side and up on the low-pressure side, creating a twist in the flow that generates vortices behind the bottom rear of the keel.

Figure 2. Vortex formation by the keel. Unless the boat is sailing straight ahead, there’s a pressure difference between the two sides of the keel. As a result, the water flow angles down on the high-pressure (lower water-speed) side and up on the low-pressure side, creating a twist in the flow that generates vortices behind the bottom rear of the keel.

When did humans first discover sailing?

Humans have been sailing the seas for at least 50 000 years, progressively migrating to all of the world’s islands, but no archaeological remains of Prehistoric navigation before 8000 BC have been found so far.

Humans have been sailing the seas for at least 50 000 years, progressively migrating to all of the world’s islands, but no archaeological remains of Prehistoric navigation before 8000BC have been found so far.

The Mediterranean Sea has been sailed for millennia since Prehistoric times, the Bronze Age, Greek and Roman times, with a climax in the first centuries of the Common Era. As far as archaic seagoing shipping is concerned, Egyptian rulers have been sailing during the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3300-2100 BC). In the Gulf, Mesopotanians were sailing to the Indus valley and to East Africa, via Dilmun (Bahrain) and Magan (Oman).

Minoans from Crete were probably the first “professional” seafarers sailing internationally in the Mediterranean area. This spanned, in round figures, the period between 2000 BC and 1500 BC.

Did Egyptians invent the sailboat?

Egyptians, Phoenicians and Babylonians were among the first to use sails to move ships using woven straw, linen or hemp coated with tar.Nothing can prove that they were the firs sailboat builders but the Egyptians were the firs people to leave documents about navigation and boats: thanks to the wind blowing from the north they used these means of transport to travel the waters of the Nile. This is what is also represented on Egyptian tombs: rowing boats, cargo ships and boats demonstrating how the Egyptians were able to design boats suitable for navigating the river.The first element used in the construction of the first boats was the papyrus, which grew abundantly on the banks of the Nile, so the papyrus boats were used to cross the river from one bank to another or even for activities such as fishing. Obviously these boats did not have a long life: once wet the papyrus lost its consistency and the boat therefore remained unstable. The invention of sailing was the most important event in the history of navigation: it most likely appeared in 3500 B.C. in the Red Sea or Persian Gulf almost certainly formed by large palm leaves.Later the Greeks, Phoenicians and Arabs, who most likely learned to sail from the Egyptians, used their sailboats to dominate the seas.

Sailing boats as we know them today were born in the 17th century in Northern Europe: yachting. This term comes from the Dutch word “jaght”wich means “hunting” and indicated precisely those boats on whichpeople hunted and lived. Jaghting experienced its greatest splendour in England: Charles II of England, in exile in Holland in 1651 knew this activity and on his return took with him a boat coining the term yacht. Very soon this activity became one of the favorite hobbies of the English nobilty until in Ireland was born in 1720 the first nautical club, the Water Club of Cork.

If you love sailing choose the right tour for you and book your sailing day trip with us!

What are the theories about the sailing stones?

In 2014, scientists were able to capture the movement of the stones for the first time using time-lapse photography. The results strongly suggest that the sailing stones are the result of a perfect balance of ice, water, and wind. In the winter of 2014, rain formed a small pond that froze overnight and thawed the next day, creating a vast sheet of ice that was reduced by midday to only a few millimeters thick. Driven by a light wind, this sheet broke up and accumulated behind the stones, slowly pushing them forward.

Where do sea stones come from?

Gemstones sourced from the sea often go through similar processes, but are created by animals – mainly mollusks and corals – rather than formed under the Earth. Some of these ocean stones are mined from the oceanic crust, while others are deposited on the ocean bed or near the shore.

The ocean is a magical place, and we believe that some of the world’s most magnificent gemstones are found under the waves. So, let us bring you ten of our stones that either come from, or are inspired by, our vast oceans.

Arguably the most well-known, the Pearl is an organic gemstone found in the ocean. Created by mollusks (particularly oysters, mussels and clams), Pearls are by far the most expensive organic gemstones around.

Where are sailing stones found?

CThe sailing stones are rocks in Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa that are pushed across the desert by sheets of ice.

• Have You Ever Wondered…. What are sailing stones?
• Why do the sailing stones move?
• Where is Racetrack Playa?

Today’s Wonder of the Day was inspired by Makayla. Makayla Wonders, “How do sailing stones move?” Thanks for WONDERing with us, Makayla!

Picture it: You’re trekking through Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth. You come across tracks in the sand. But these are no normal tracks. Instead of footprints or paw prints, you’re following one thin, long line. What could make a track like this? A snake? A person on a unicycle? You keep moving, and finally, you get to the end of the line. There it is, the object that made this track. It’s… a rock?