Moving rocks of the Racetrack Playa https://sharonahill.com/moving-rocks-of-the-racetrack-playa/ #DeathValley, #MovingRocks, #RacetrackPlaya, #SailingStones, #TheRacetrack

Death Valley's moving rocks
#aiphotography #desert #movingrocks #deathvalley #california #mysterious #midjourney #stablediffusion #conspiracy #conspiracytheory #desertphotography #desertrocks
https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/the-racetrack.htm

Moving rocks of the Racetrack Playa

We all can comprehend how rocks break apart due to heat and frost action and fall due to gravity. But, for a long while, there was a popular mystery surrounding moderately-sized rocks moving across a dead flat surface in Death Valley leaving a trail behind them.

The famous location where this happens is Racetrack Playa (The Racetrack), a remote valley within Death Valley National Park, California. But it also occurs at the Little Bonnie Claire Playa in Nevada, both of which have similar geographical settings. The Racetrack playa collects water runoff but because there is no drainage outlet the water infiltrates and evaporates.

Landsat imagery with Racetrack playa in the center (white area).

The heavy rocks along the playa have eroded from the surrounding mountains. But once on the very level plain, they seemingly slid across the mud-cracked surface of the dry lake bed without human intervention. The stones were thought to slide, sail, or wander by some mysterious natural means or through paranormal or mystical “energy”. I can’t remember when I first heard of them but it was when I was a kid in the late 70s, I think. The moving rocks were featured in many books on American mysteries. It was generally considered more likely to be an unobserved natural phenomenon rather than aliens or earth energies. However, Death Valley has many weird locations and associated stories, so the moving stones added to its reputation as a spooky place.

In 1948, USGS scientists who found the tracks speculated that wind was moving the rocks during wet periods. Yet, that couldn’t be the whole story. A fuller explanation for this movement began to solidify in the early-2000s.

Left: photo By Lgcharlot – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8514260;
Right: photo https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2080023

The location is not that easy to access, requiring an off-road vehicle. No one had yet seen the rocks move, just the trails left behind. Technology like GPS and remote camera equipment was the key to discovering what was going on. Brian Dunning, a science writer, first noticed that sheets of thin ice were blown across the playa on a cold morning. He filmed a video showing the thin sheet of water moving rapidly across the surface with respect to a strong wind.

A team of academic researchers was later able to attach GPS units to some of the playa rocks. They also used time-lapse photography and installed weather instruments at the location. These measurements led to the conclusion that even a moderate breeze was able to move thin ice sheets over meltwater that buoyed the large rocks. They recorded movements of hundreds of meters in a few events that took place from December 2013 and January 2014.

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 the 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.

National Park Service website

Damage from foot traffic on the muddy playa.

Why had no one seen the rocks move? Water on the playa is rare. And, visitors are prohibited from being there when the ground is wet because foot traffic would tear up the fragile surface. Additionally, the rocks often moved together so it was hard to tell they were moving at all even when you were right there watching. The ice masked the tracks that were revealed only when the surface dried out. The unique combination of a 0.5 in of water, ice formation, and stiff wind is also rare. For these reasons, other playas don’t typically exhibit moving rocks.

You can read the paper they published here: Sliding Rocks on Racetrack Playa, Death Valley National Park: First Observation of Rocks in Motion

Some people haven’t gotten the message that the question was solved. Or, they badly want to maintain the mystery because the answer is too mundane to them. That’s a terrible reason to pass on misinformation about the earth. It’s much more satisfying to accept that humans solved a curious puzzle through thinking and technology.

#DeathValley #movingRocks #RacetrackPlaya #sailingStones #TheRacetrack

https://sharonahill.com/?p=1114

Strange lights and levitating rocks at Arkansas crystal mine

Springing from the spine of Arkansas’ Ouachita mountains are several commercial crystal mines open for public collecting of sizable quartz crystals. Only one such mine claims to be an area of bizarre paranormal activity occurring in association with special “crystal energy” at the site. The claims are so extraordinary the owners think it may not be safe for people to visit unaccompanied. The activity at the site has attracted the attention of UFO investigators and a crew from the Travel Channel’s Expedition Unknown series. Stories from the Board Camp Crystal Mine are a perfect example of Spooky Geology.

This fascinating place in Mena, Arkansas is owned by Orville and Cheryl Murphy, who, by all accounts, are God-fearing, hospitable, well-spoken, humorous, and honest people who opened the mine in 2012. According to the local newspaper report, strange incidents began in February of 2017 when the Murphys noticed odd lights including glowing spheres that floated and moved as if under intelligent control. But even more extraordinarily, they have photographs and accounts that claim the rocks there move and even levitate!

Aerial view of the Board Camp Mine location from Google maps.

Investigators from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) headed to the site. The following is from the Mena Star describing the MUFON involvement:

The Murphys report that since February of this year, there has been phenomena happening at Board Camp Crystal Mine, which was undeniably scientifically unexplained, according to [Chase] Kloetzke and her team of [MUFON] investigators. They conducted the investigation at the mine on February 22, just 4 days after the first oddity was experienced by the Murphys and their son, Josh White, who was visiting from Austin, TX. According to the Murphys, Kloetzke explained that the occurrence of the reported phenomena attracted MUFON’s interest because of the physical evidence left behind and the Murphys’ credibility as witnesses. Upon a visit, Kloetzke herself experienced some of the phenomena!

We aren’t privy to this evidence because the parties involved agreed not to disclose all the information until the Expedition Unknown special episode airs. Josh Gates, the host of the show and a well-known paranormal celebrity figure, visited the site on May 26. The MUFON team had reported their observations to the Travel Channel in March prompting the site to be featured in a four-part mini-series called Hunt for Extraterrestrials. You can view the quite dramatic trailer for the special here. (See update below.)

We can hear many of the claims about the mine from what the Murphys have shared on their Facebook page, YouTube channel, and from promotion on their website. A particularly detailed interview with the Murphys is available from the Inception Radio podcast, which is where I obtained several details below. What’s so weird about this place?

Last winter, Orville reported seeing sparks of light at the site. He calls them “orbs” – a common term for seemingly intelligent and anomalous balls of light. Cheryl didn’t see them at first. Orville then filmed the orbs. The video taken at night shows a light, but size and distance are impossible to judge. They said some friends suggested that the lights could be caused by the “crystal energy” at the location. Claims about the magical properties of quartz crystals are ubiquitous on the Internet. Single crystals are promoted by New Age practitioners as healing devices, having some as yet undiscovered “energy”. Quartz does have piezoelectric properties – a voltage potential can be generated when a stress, like squeezing, is applied to it. Orville clearly understands that quartz has triboluminescent properties. As a demonstration, visitors reported that he heats a crystal, then sprays it with water to rapidly cool it to produce a spark and also strikes the crystals to produce visible light.The Murphys appear to connect the anomalous lights they see to this “piezo energy” feature of the crystals.

One anomaly, however, was described as beyond the normal activity. The Murphys experienced a light event of “major proportions” that lasted 10 seconds. Three beams of light, like spotlights, went an estimated 300 feet in the air and flattened on top. Cheryl said she couldn’t tell if the beams were going up or coming down. They later entertained the possibility that the lights were from some craft floating in the air. What if UFOs were fueling up on crystal energy?! Some neighbors, they said, had also reported lights on adjacent properties and also say they saw some kind of craft in the sky. The Murphys allege that several events were witnessed by multiple people at the same time.

MUFON and other investigators were called in. The timeline and circumstances aren’t exactly clear. But the claims grew to include more than just lights. People at the site reported their batteries were drained unusually quickly, that there were incidents of static electricity and perhaps burn marks or dead plant material, and that the fence posts became “magnetized” and “polarized”. Investigators brought in a hydrophone because they knew crystals were created by water, they said. The hydrophone was said to have detected the sound of water rushing below ground. Water coming up from the subsurface was also reported (after an above-normal rainfall period).

It all sounds very weird, the Murphys agree. The Murphys and the investigators who have shared bits of their experiences (noting the confidentiality agreements required by the Travel Channel until the show aires) are enthusiastically speculating about the causes. They think that the quartz crystal energy and the flowing water might be connected. In the Inception Radio interview, the Murphys suggest that the natural flow of earth energy has been disturbed. The crystals, they say, emit a “frequency” and they are part of a powerful “energy grid” in the earth – a theme related to ley lines. The crystals are interacting with the water’s electromagnetic charge and creating the light phenomena in the form of plasma. Ideas about the cause of these reported anomalies are all over the place. Also put forward was the idea that sound waves (or “vibrational frequencies”) may be producing the colors in the orbs which, the owners claim, are seen almost every night regardless of weather conditions. It is impossible to tell size and distance, let alone the source of the lights, from videos taken in the dark without markers or direction.

If you can believe it, things got even weirder. Another of the Murphy’s videos purports to show a rock on the site becoming weightless (a scale shown in the picture) and then levitating a foot off the ground! According to the Board Creek Crystal Mine Facebook page, others have reported that crystals obtained from the site levitated when they got home, which appears to exceed the bounds of known geological science (and sort of negates the idea that the site itself is producing some mysterious anti-gravity effect). Falling and rolling rocks, they suspect, might be coming out from “portals” (from another dimension). They also think the mine site may be a “vortex” – an area of the earth with special electromagnetic energy properties. Cheryl suggested that new scientific discoveries could explain this. In a comment to me on the FB page, she writes:

What’s amazing is that this last year or so, on the Science channel we hear scientists sharing theories of multiple universes, our universe is not finite, sound frequencies emitting color, (which is a possible theory for the colorful orbs we’ve been told), all the quantum science, it’s just amazing that we’re hearing things now, we never dreamed of hearing. We believe there has to be something with those levitating rocks to do with sound frequencies, or the continuing elevated electromagnetic field. For example, we just put new fence posts in the ground a month ago. They are now magnetized, when tested with a Gauss meter, and even polarized, when tested with a compass! What could cause that? It’s fascinating, and we prefer to approach this from a scientific viewpoint, but let’s face it… the number of testimonies of UFOs from credible witnesses for the last 50+ years, and now local neighbors who contacted us to share their stories of weird lights they’ve seen around here, does draw our attention!

The Murphys closed the mine until mid-July when it was reopened for special tours but not collecting. The new tours are billed as “UnXplained” and the website is curiously called metaphysicalcrystalsanctuary.com.  For more rampant speculation about the geology and hydrology and various fringe ideas, I suggest listening to the Murphys describe this in their own words available on the Inception Radio podcast, which focuses on potential UFO activity.

I contacted the Arkansas Geological Survey to ask them what they knew about this mine and the bizarre claims surrounding it. They hadn’t heard the news of these extraordinary events! In my discussions with geologist Corbin Cannon, we couldn’t come up with any ideas for why this particular mine is any more geologically special than the rest.

The mine is situated in the Stanley Shale. The quartz veins and associated minerals were hydrothermally emplaced during the closing stages of the mountain building event, around 280 to 245 million years ago. [See Howard, 2008] The Murphys seemed amazed at the consistency of the prismatic crystal shape, however, this is a normal habit of quartz. There are no mapped magnetic anomalies at this location and, though there is plenty of faulting due to the past orogenic stresses, the area is not seismically active. The shale is an aquitard (cannot transmit any useful amount of water) and the location is on a dip slope. This might explain the sound of water reported by the investigators. But it’s unclear if there are pipes underground that could also account for the sounds. The possibility exists that stray current could be leaking from the electrical lines from nearby houses and traveling through the ground. This may account for electromagnetic field observations. With regards to polarization and magnetization of the fence posts, pieces of metal regularly exhibit such polarity. It’s not unusual. I just checked a garden ornament on a metal post outside with a compass and, sure enough, the top and the bottom register differently on the compass. It’s not clear what Orville meant when he said the posts were magnetized, especially if they contain iron. Iron posts in the ground can also conduct any small current running through the ground from stray electricity lines. These various factors could be producing some electromagnetic field variations. So, we can see that many of the so-called anomalous claims aren’t strange at all but can seem so when taken out of context.

It’s not possible to make any conclusions from the videos of the lights. There is not enough information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wntjfrS9Cq8

The videos of the levitating and moving rocks are also not helpful. They consist of series of still pictures taken with a game camera. The levitation effects could easily have been achieved with clear thread or fishing line. The associated flashes of lights in the photos along with the temperature changes and other effects can also be recreated without too much effort. No live video of the anomalous movement is available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIuDhDUP15g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76LoCqKk5jU

Several visitors reported hearing thumps (presumed to be falling rocks) or seeing rocks roll by. I’m afraid that’s just not enough evidence to say something unusual is going on. A few unimpressive videos are not enough to convince most people that the physical laws of the universe are being violated at this location considering that alternative, non-paranormal explanations are readily available. If it is eventually well-documented that the site is one-of-a-kind, where nature behaves supernaturally, or some undocumented stresses are causing the quartz to produce orbs of light, then perhaps we can consider it a phenomenal place.

The paranormal vibe created at the site is a nifty way for the owners to distinguish their mine from the others in the area as a tourist attraction. That the site will be featured on a TV show is priceless promotion. The site joins hundreds of other locations around the U.S. that use spooky claims to draw paying visitors. The Murphys continue to encourage scientists to come and investigate but, so far, only MUFON, the TV crew and some tour groups seem to have been able to make collective observations there. The Arkansas Geological Survey has not been contacted even after this contact was suggested to the Murphys. It is the job of the AGS to catalog the geological information of the state. Documenting claims of a crystal energy vortex that causes all sorts of amazing anomalies and serves as an extraterrestrial refueling station sounds like a very urgent phenomenon to document!

A request to the MUFON investigator for their report on the site has not been answered. But the report is scheduled to be published in the MUFON Journal issue of November 2017, after the TV program airs.

Expedition Unknown special 25 Oct 2017

Part 4 of the series “Search for Extraterrestrials” aired on Travel Channel in October 2017. I’ll be blunt – don’t watch it. It contains basically no interesting information or evidence about the location. The presentation did not live up to the extreme hype and it’s cringey to have to watch Josh Gates act so over-the-top dramatic about a big nothingburger. They did see a light at the Board Camp site at night and recorded it, but it doesn’t tell us anything. It could have been a satellite, a drone, or some other man-made thing, but the details are lacking in order to make that determination. Plus, it didn’t rise from the ground or descend from the sky. It simply floated over. Apparently. Remember: this is television and not good television at that. Do not trust “infotainment”; it is not equivalent to facts.

The show did not mention the levitating rocks or other paranormal effects that the owners and visitors have promoted as happening there. The idea of crystals playing a role was not even broached. No background was really provided at all.

As it stands, the promotion of alien craft, strange lights, crystal energy and physics-defying rocks at this location (or any location) are without substantial evidence to support their reality. There are certainly many subjective claims but those are not reliable enough to make a conclusion about the cause being something otherworldly. Extraordinary claims must have extraordinary evidence to back them up and these crystal claims fizzled out.

#Arkansas #BoardCampCrystalMine #crystalHealing #crystals #earthEnergy #earthLights #levitatingRocks #lights #movingRocks #orbs #Paranormal #quartz

https://sharonahill.com/?p=479