In a particularly parched region of an extraordinary planet, rocks big and small glide across a mirror-flat landscape, leaving behind a tangle of trails. Some rocks travel in pairs, their two tracks so perfectly in synch along straight stretches and around curves that they seem to be made by a car. Others go freewheeling, wandering back and forth alone and sometimes traveling the length of several football fields. In many cases, the trails lead right to resting rocks, but in others, the joyriders have vanished.
This may sound like an alien world, but it's actually Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, Calif. Since the 1940s, researchers have documented trails here and on several other playas in California and Nevada. Seventeen undergraduate and graduate students from the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Academy (LPSA) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., traveled to the Racetrack and nearby Bonnie Claire playas this summer to investigate how these rocks move across the nearly empty flats.
Some rocks are thought to have moved nearly as fast as a person walks. But nobody has actually seen a rock in motion, and scientists haven't deduced exactly how it happens. The easy explanations—assistance from animals, gravity, or earthquakes—were quickly ruled out, leaving room for plenty of study and irresistible speculation over the years.
"When you see these amazing rocks and trails," says Mindy Krzykowski, an intern from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, "you really get into coming up with your own ideas about what's going on."
This may sound like an alien world, but it's actually Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, Calif. Since the 1940s, researchers have documented trails here and on several other playas in California and Nevada. Seventeen undergraduate and graduate students from the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Academy (LPSA) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., traveled to the Racetrack and nearby Bonnie Claire playas this summer to investigate how these rocks move across the nearly empty flats.
Some rocks are thought to have moved nearly as fast as a person walks. But nobody has actually seen a rock in motion, and scientists haven't deduced exactly how it happens. The easy explanations—assistance from animals, gravity, or earthquakes—were quickly ruled out, leaving room for plenty of study and irresistible speculation over the years.
"When you see these amazing rocks and trails," says Mindy Krzykowski, an intern from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, "you really get into coming up with your own ideas about what's going on."
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