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Richard D. Norris: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Richard D. Norris, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• Death Valley's 'sailing stones' drag themselves across the desert — filmed only since 2014

  For decades, visitors to Racetrack Playa found heavy rocks that had seemingly crawled across the dry lakebed on their own, leaving long trails behind them. In 2014, researchers fit…

  — Richard Norris et al., Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Racetrack Playa

• Death Valley's 'sailing stones' move themselves across a dry lakebed

  For decades no one ever saw the rocks of Racetrack Playa move, yet trails hundreds of metres long snaked behind them across the cracked mud. In 2014, researchers fitted stones with…

  — Richard D. Norris, James M. Norris, Ralph D. Lorenz, Jib Ray and Brian Jackson, Sliding Rocks on Racetrack Playa, Death Valley National Park: First Observation of Rocks in Motion

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