The Moving Rocks of Racetrack Playa

Racetrack Playa, nestled between the Cottonwood Mountains to the east and the Last Chance Range to the West, is a seasonally dry lake  in the northern part of the Panamint Mountains in Death Valley National Park, California, U.S.A. and it is famous for rocks that mysteriously move across its surface.

Just so we're clear here... the Playa is a flat surface in the middle of a desert and the rocks weigh as much as 700 pounds!  There has been no concrete explanation for their movement across the dry lake bed.

The phenomenon was noticed over a hundred years ago by explorers and gold miners who noted the large boulders and the gouges they seemed to leave on the surface, but it was not really studied scientifically until about 1948. To this day, the reason for their wayward ways has not been fully explained.

Some people claim that the rocks levitate and move around.  Others claim that magnetism between the rocks, surface, and mountains are to blame.

Other more supposedly educated people believe that the rocks move due to the rocks sliding on a thin damp sheet of water or ice and being propelled by the wind.  For this theory to hold true, the wind would have to be blowing at over 175 miles per hour to muster enough force to budge the rocks.

Some say that the rock movement is the result of pranksters, but this theory can be ruled out right away as the footprints of the culprits would be visible as well. Some of the trails, including foot prints of people, can be fossilized for years before fading.

Whatever the case may be, in the century that this strange phenomenon has been known about, no one has actually seen one of the rocks move and it hasn't been documented anywhere else on the planet.

Despite this attention, the rocks don't seem to care.  They just continue their odd journey across the dry lake bed.