The real rolling stones: Mystery of Death Valley's gliding rocks



These extraordinary pictures reveal a bizarre event that is puzzling the science world - rocks that glide across the desert.

Amid the eerie silence and the 50C heat of California's Death Valley these giant boulders appear to move smoothly - and unaided - across the desert.

The rocks, some as heavy as 17 stone, edge along in bizarre, straight-line patterns across the ultra-flat surface of the valley. They can travel more than 350 yards a year.



Er... how did that get there? One of the extraordinary moving rocks leaves a track through Death Valley

Scientists believe the phenomenon is caused by a coming together of specific weather conditions.

Studies suggest a combination of 90mph winds, ice formations at night and thin layers of wet clay on the surface of the desert all help to push them along.

Photographer Mike Byrne, 40, has spent years documenting the stones' mysterious movements.

As his amazing pictures show these real-life rolling stones leave trails across the sand in places almost untouched by man.

He said: 'Some of these rocks are as heavy as a person, it is really is strange to imagine them gliding across the desert like this.

'They must be the original real-life rolling stones, they just keep moving through the sand and I don't believe anyone has really 100 per cent worked it out yet.

Rock on: More of the boulders and the eerie paths they leave across the Valley

'Most of the stones are found on an old lake bed, known as the Racetrack Playa, where the ground is particularly flat.

'It has been documented over the years and it is something very special to witness, although I know climatologists believe the phenomenon could disappear in a few years as the temps continue to rise.

'One of the strongest theories about what the rocks move is that water rising from beneath the surface of the sand is pushed by the wind creating a surface the rocks can move along.'

Death Valley is the lowest point in the U.S., at 282ft below sea level.

It is almost completely flat and holds the record for the second highest temperature ever recorded on earth, a blistering 58C.

In the 1990s a study by a team of scientists lead by Professor John Reid, from Hampshire College, Massachusetts, attempted to explain the rocks' movement.

His study concluded that the rocks may be moved when they become embedded in sheets of ice forming at night on the surface of the sand.