Devil’s Racetrack in Death Valley

I was genuinely flabbergasted that Physics Today published the anti-science article about the Devil’s Racetrack in Death Valley in the Backscatter of the September 2017 issue.

http://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.3705

Don’t you people have editors? It is exactly the same as if you published an article endorsing UFOs, ghosts, astrology, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, crystal skulls, crop circles, the Bermuda Triangle, or the the Lost City of Atlantis. Let me start out by overstating the obvious. There has NEVER EVER EVER been a single rock in Death Valley that ever moved by a thousandth of an inch, or by any other distance.

So what’s the origin of the myth? Let’s say it rains, and the ground can’t absorb all the water. Where does the water go? It flows to the lowest point. That’s why there exist rivers on Earth. Death Valley is extremely flat, but nothing is perfectly flat, so even on this flat ground, there has to be lowest points that water would flow towards. The weight of the large boulders depress the ground beneath them ever so slightly, but just enough to create slightly lower point in otherwise very flat terrain. When it rains, very small rivulets of water flow towards and pool around the base of the boulders. When the water evaporates, the ground contracts, leaving a very small dry creek bed leading to the boulder. This is what these apparent paths are. This is proven by the fact that they end in a teardrop shape surrounding the boulder, which was left over from when the water pooled around the boulder. If the paths were scrape marks left by the boulder being moved, they would end abruptly at the rock, instead of encircling the rock. Furthermore, such a scrape mark would have well defined edges, and uncover subsurface soil, which these small dry creek beds do not. These small dry creek beds left over when small rivulets of water naturally flowed to the lowest points, which is where boulders depressed the ground, do not in any resemble scrape marks that would be left if someone dragged a boulder across the ground.

Furthermore, the authors of this pathetic pseudoscience paper claim that the large flat face area somehow catches the wind, and has a sail effect. If there were a large heavy object, with a small footprint, in order to minimize friction with the ground, but a large frontal area on one side, to serve a sail, pushing on it would cause it to tip over, not move across the ground. Try the following experiment right now. Get a book and balance it on it’s edge, so the book is standing vertically, and the front of the book is facing you. Now push on the front of the book. What happens? It tips over. It does not move across the table. Furthermore, there is literally no wind on the planet Earth strong enough to move a boulder of that weight. If hypothetically, there were such a wind, it might lift it up and drop it back down, or at most it might tumble a bit before coming to a stop, but literally no wind of any hypothetical strength would push a boulder across the ground, causing it to scoot along the ground, leaving scrape marks behind it.

The people making this ludicrous claim have not provided any evidence for their claim. I leave it as an exercise for students to actually calculate the friction, force imparted by the wind, etc. In order to maximize the sail effect, the amount of wind the side of the rock could catch, you have to maximize the frontal area of the side facing the wind, to minimize friction, you have to minimize the footprint, or the area of the bottom of the rock, to minimize weight, you want it to be as thin as possible. If it had those dimensions, it would be top heavy, and easily tip over. If you change those dimensions, make it shorter, more squat or cube shaped, you are decreasing the amount of force the wind could impart to it, increasing friction, increasing weight. A window into this issue is to look at known objects that can be pushed by the wind. A sailboat can be pushed by the wind because it is on water which has far less friction. If you put the sailboat on land, it would not move anywhere. A land yacht can be pushed by the wind because it is on wheels, which have far less friction. If you took off the wheels, it would not go anywhere. Also, have you noticed that nobody has ever seen these rocks move or caught them moving on camera?

To explain the origin of this myth, you need to place it context. Part of the context is geographical. It is not a coincidence that the Devil’s Racetrack is located in the American southwest, which is mecca for the mystical occult, and pseudoscience belief of all kinds, especially UFOs. It includes Roswell, New Mexico and Area 51 in Nevada. New Age people claim that the American southwest is full spiritual energy vortices.

https://www.tripsavvy.com/sedona-arizona-energy-vortexes...

Not far from the Devil’s Racetrack is the ghost town of Bodie, California, which people swear is haunted by real ghosts, as well as being cursed. Also, the desolate isolation of the American southwest, and the often unusual topography, really plays tricks on people’s minds, and leads people to belief that it is eery or spooky. The fact that it is so inaccessible makes it seem more believable that strange things could remain hidden there.

The second relevant context is Ancient Astronaut Theory, as promoted by the TV series “Ancient Aliens”, which claims that ancient human structures, such the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge, were actually constructed by UFOs. UFO believers want to believe that the rocks in Death Valley are moved around (from their point of view, presumably by UFOs) because that would confirm their claim that UFOs have the ability and the proclivity to move around large stones, and thus it is more believable that they also built the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge.

Now that we have explained the origin of the myth, the next question is why any scientist would ever be duped by this. Obviously, the vast majority of scientists would never waste their time on such silly nonsense. Unfortunately, there is a small percentage of scientists who do not question of the premise of a problem that they have been given to solve. This is left over from when they are students. When you a physics student, the teacher assigns problem, and your job is to solve the problem without questioning the premise of the problem itself. Unfortunately, some scientists retain this way of thinking for the rest of their life, and they often blindly attempt to solve problems where the premise is not true. For example, there is no increased rate of ships sinking in the Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else. Yet, some scientists came up with a supposed solution to the supposed enigma of the Bermuda Triangle by postulating that upwellings of methane gas beneath ships causes ships in the Bermuda Triangle to lose buoyancy. Other scientists attempted to explain crop circles by saying that they are caused by unusual winds. Other scientists attempted to explain UFOs by saying that they are caused by energy released during earthquakes. The mistake they are making is not questioning the premise of the problem presented to them. There is no higher rate of ships sinking in the Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else. There are no crop circles, other than those made by people. There are no lights in the sky that need to be explained by invoking earthquakes. The rocks in Death Valley do not move!