Blink: Desert Edition
Sign #529 that too much of my brain is occupied by Doctor Who: while reading an issue of National Geographic with an article about Death Valley, I came across the passage below.
I am thinking specially of an area in the northwest section of Death Valley called the Racetrack, where, inexplicably, rocks as big as microwave ovens go zipping across the desiccated mud for distances of more than half a mile (880 m). The evidence is all there: deep tracks in the surface, with a rock at the end. One concludes, reluctantly, that the rocks somehow traveled a couple of hundred yards, leaving a telltale trail behind. There are over 150 of these roving rocks. But no one has ever seen them move.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking, friends? No one has ever seen them move. My first thought was "Hey, it's an ancestral form of the weeping angels! They only move when no one's watching."
Immediately after that came lots of thoughts about how weird the natural world is, how wonderful it is that we still have such mysteries on our own planet, how much geology rocks (cue pun groan), and whether I ought to add Death Valley to the list of places I want to visit (or stay the hell away since I tend to blink a lot!). Still, that very first thought showed my particular brand of geekiness by combining evolution and DW.
The article (complete with sadly mundane explanation involving absolutely no wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff) is available here.
I am thinking specially of an area in the northwest section of Death Valley called the Racetrack, where, inexplicably, rocks as big as microwave ovens go zipping across the desiccated mud for distances of more than half a mile (880 m). The evidence is all there: deep tracks in the surface, with a rock at the end. One concludes, reluctantly, that the rocks somehow traveled a couple of hundred yards, leaving a telltale trail behind. There are over 150 of these roving rocks. But no one has ever seen them move.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking, friends? No one has ever seen them move. My first thought was "Hey, it's an ancestral form of the weeping angels! They only move when no one's watching."
Immediately after that came lots of thoughts about how weird the natural world is, how wonderful it is that we still have such mysteries on our own planet, how much geology rocks (cue pun groan), and whether I ought to add Death Valley to the list of places I want to visit (or stay the hell away since I tend to blink a lot!). Still, that very first thought showed my particular brand of geekiness by combining evolution and DW.
The article (complete with sadly mundane explanation involving absolutely no wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff) is available here.