[Rockhounds] Racetrack Playa: The home of Death Valley's mysterious 'sailing stones'

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Racetrack Playa is a dry, flat lakebed in California that is littered with
hundreds of mysterious, moving rocks. Also known as the "sailing stones,"
these rocks leave tracks stretching up to 1,500 feet (460 meters) long as
they drift across the surface seemingly without cause.

The sailing stones have puzzled researchers since the mid-1900s, but until
2013, no one had actually seen or recorded the rocks moving. It was clear,
however, that they periodically changed location, because they left grooves
in the ground behind them. Remarkably, some of the Racetrack Playa rocks
weigh around 700 pounds (320 kilograms).

In a *study published in 2014*
<https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0105948>, scientists finally captured
the movement of the sailing stones. The researchers fitted 15 rocks with
motion-activated GPS instruments and installed a time-lapse camera to
monitor them. The team also set up a high-resolution weather station to
pick up tiny variations in wind velocity.

The experiment provided answers in a surprisingly short amount of time,
given that the sailing stones can stay in one spot for more than a decade
at a time without moving.

https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/racetrack-playa-the-home-of-death-valley-s-mysterious-sailing-stones