Stingrays swim over rippled sands in this award-winning image from photographer Gregory Sherman. Above this peaceful vista, waves break and a dramatic skyscape looms. It’s the regular back-and-forth of the Keep reading
Tag: sand ripples
Shaping the Earth Through Cataclysm
Though we often think of the Earth as changing slowly, some events are so catastrophic that they change the landscape irrevocably. Some 15,000 years ago, a massive lake covered what Keep reading
How Dunes Form
On its face, the idea that sand and wind can come together to form massive mountainous dunes seems bizarre. But dunes — and their smaller cousins, ripples — are everywhere, Keep reading
Martian Flyover
Fly over a Martian crater in this incredibly detailed 8K video built from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery. Like Earth’s deserts, Mars is largely shaped by wind, and we get some Keep reading
Sandy Wrinkles
Water flowing back and forth over sand quickly forms a field of dune-like wrinkles. On the upstream side, the flow is a little faster, and it picks up grains of Keep reading
Surge Flows
Sandy beaches can be a great place to play with neat flows. In a recent video, Frank Howarth describes playing with beach rivers on the Oregon coast and observing a Keep reading
The Winds of Mars
The Martian atmosphere is scant compared to Earth’s, but its winds still sculpt and change the surface regularly. The average atmospheric pressure on Mars is only 0.6% of Earth’s, and Keep reading
Martian Ripples
Earth and Mars both feature fields of giant sand dunes. The huge dunes are shaped by the wind and miniature avalanches of sand, and their surface is marked by small Keep reading
Sand Ripples in Tidal Flats
Sand, winds, and waves can interact to form remarkable and complex patterns. These sand ripples from the tidal flats of Cape Cod are a testament to such interactions. When a Keep reading