The Mysterious Moving Stones
There are stones
and huge boulders, some weighing as much as three quarters of a ton, that have the ability
to propel themselves across the flat desert floor of Death Valley, California.
For years scientists have been baffled by the strange riddle of the moving stones of Death Valley. These huge stones have the ability to move themselves across the dry, dusty desert floor sometimes as much as 900 feet in a single movement. While no one has ever actually seen a stone move, Dr. Robert P. Sharp, a geologist in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, states that he monitored the movement of 30 stones from 1968 to 1974. Dr. Sharp states that stones move at speeds of up to three feet per second, and have been known to move as much as two miles.
At one point,
Dr. Sharp and Dwight Carey, formerly of the Department of Geology at U.C.L.A, positioned
iron stakes around each of the stones to measure the slightest movement. But even these
posed no obstacle, once the stones started moving. Apparently these stakes didn't stop 28
of the 30 stones from escaping and moving outside the encirclement, Dr. Sharp revealed.
Some immutable law of nature somehow prescribes that movements will occur only in the
darkness of stormy nights. Interestingly, of the 30 stones monitored, Dr. Sharp said seven
actually disappeared inexplicably and without a trace.
Don Spalking is superintendent of Death Valley National Monument. He knows Dr. Sharp, and he knows the doctor's research to find out what really makes the stones move.
"The experts have been coming here for years" he says, "But no one has actually seen a stone move. We know they do it, but we don't know how or why".
And so the scientists continue to research and study the secret of the mysterious moving stones of Death Valley, California, in another classic example of the unexplained.
