Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Smooth Atacama Boulders...

In the extreme dryness of the Atacama desert in Chile, there are large fields of boulders on the flat desert floor.  The midsections of these boulders are worn smooth.  Such smoothing is normally caused by erosion involving water, but this desert has virtually none.  So why are those boulders smooth?  In a word: earthquakes.

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