Neat rings, stripes and swirls embellish many cold, rocky landscapes. Although these beautiful stone patterns look like humanmade artwork, they’re all natural. Scientists have long known that such rocky patterns result from freezing and thawing. But precisely how they develop has been a mystery — until now.
New experiments reveal that so-called “ice needles” can sort and organize rocks into many patterns, Anyuan Li of the University of Tsukuba in Japan and colleagues report the Oct. 5 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The beauty of [our] experiments is that you can actually see direct information on how the patterns form,” says Bernard Hallet of the University of
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