Nature Pictures

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[Nayla]

 

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[Nayla]

 

[Nayla]

 

[Nayla]

 

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[Mighty Goat]

 

[Mighty Goat]

 

[Mighty Goat]

 

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Swimmers would float in the high salinity of Australia's Lake Hillier (Credit: Liqeni Hillier/Wikipedia)

 

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It took a NASA scientist to crack the case. In 2006, Ralph Lorenz developed a kitchen table model using a small rock frozen in an inch of water in a Tupperware container to demonstrate ice shove, the phenomenon behind the mysterious sailing stones.

In winter, Racetrack Playa fills with water and the lakebed’s stones become encased in ice. Thanks to ice’s buoyancy, even a light breeze can send those frozen boulders sailing across the muddy bottom of the lakebed. Stones with rough bottoms leave straight tracks, while those with smooth bottoms drift and digress. Warmer months melt the ice and evaporate the water, leaving only the stones and their mysterious trails.

Visitors can see these sailing stones in a few locations, including Little Bonne Claire Playa in Nevada and most famously, Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa.

 

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The Fairy Circles are millions of circular honeycomb-like patches across the Namib Desert (Credit: robertharding/Alamy)

 

[Paradosiaka]

 

[Paradosiaka]

 

[Paradosiaka]