Mysterious Musical Stones of Ringing Rocks Park in Pennsylvania | Hacker News Reader

Mysterious Musical Stones of Ringing Rocks Park in Pennsylvania

strangesounds.org

69 pointsEarth_Change19 comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_rocks

Contradicting the article:

« The boulders continue to ring when removed from the boulder fields. Myths have been developed by authorities to discourage the theft of boulders from the fields. At the current stage, however, most fields have been picked clean of small portable "ringers", and breaking of large boulders into smaller pieces releases the internal stresses—thus causing them to stop ringing (i.e., breaking a piece off of a large ringing rock will only gain a dead chunk of rock). "Small" ringers found today weigh over a ton and would have to be dragged out of the boulder fields using large equipment. »

Found ringing rocks at the top of jagged limestone mountains in Vang Vieng, Laos a few months ago. Here's what they sound like: https://streamable.com/yj916

I'm not sure these really are particularly mysterious. The rock resonates when struck in the same way than bells do. This is true of glass, metal and some crystals obviously so it doesn't require any strange mechanism to work in rocks as long as presumably the rock has a particular consistency and shape and you can hold it in such a way that it can resonate without you clamping the vibrations.

Musical stones or rocks are known in many places around the world. Here are some examples:

Africa - http://www.namibian.org/travel/archaeology/musical-stone.htm... UK - https://www.neatorama.com/2007/01/28/the-original-rock-music...

Stalactites often resonate beautifully when struck with a soft mallet. I've been in caves in France and in Africa where tour guides demonstrated this phenomenon.

Here's a recording of music played on a rock sculpture specifically designed to be playable like a xylophone -https://www.amazon.com/Music-Stones-Stephan-Micus/dp/B000025...

This one is pretty cool, because it explains how a particular set of musical pillars in India were constructed so they play a scale. http://www.phenomenalplace.com/2017/09/musical-pillars-at-ha...

I don't approve of just randomly going and hitting them with metal hammers, you'll erode them to nothing that way.

This. What a bunch of yahoos destroying an interesting natural phenomenon with fucking hammers. The video even suggests wearing eye protection so rock chips don’t hit you in the cornea, but makes no mention of damaging the very thing you find so interesting.

At the same time, it's just a regular rock until you hit it with a hammer. If nobody ever hits those rocks with a hammer then they might as well not exist. I don't think animals, plants, trees, fungus, bacteria or the rocks themselves care if they're smashed to shards. So they're purely for human enjoyment.

why not go all the way into solipsism and declare that all other humans also don't care and are just there for your amusement?

(I can guarantee you that at the very least, the animals care a lot whether they get smashed)

The rocks are very big, very heavy, very dense. I've taken a hammer and banged the shit out of them. They didn't have a scratch. I thought the hammer was going to break. And there's a lot of them.

Rocks however are a totally renewable resource, just drop the sand into a subduction zone and poof out of the other side comes fresh granite :-). That said, if you've ever been to a stamping mill you will get an appreciation of the energy it takes to convert metamorphic rock into sand. These rocks are in no danger from the humans tapping them with hammers.

I've been to Ringing Rocks Park in Upper Black Eddy, PA several times, http://www.buckscounty.org/government/ParksandRecreation/Par.... It's in easy driving distance of my house.

I think visiting the park is a great experience for many people. But it could be dangerous for very young children, and difficult to inaccessible for people with mobility and balance differences.

Totally agree! I took my 4 year old and 2.5 year old recently and we had a heck of a time making sure we didn’t get hurt. They did have fun though :)

I'm in PA as well and have always wanted to take my kids but maybe I'll wait until they are a little older, thanks for the tip.

So this was the inspiration for the Singing Towers of Darillium[0][1]?

[0]: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Singing_Towers [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJqE2onQUSk

I found a rock like this as a child (but cream colored, fairly flat, about the size of a dinner plate, and an inch or two thick), though I'd never heard of the phenomena from any other source until now.

I think I found it on a trip, but I'm not certain which. It's probably still sitting in my parent's garden, somewhere.

Ancient India used similar tricks to make different sounds on pillars and statues of a certain building: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhoOA3pASy4

There are several more of these in the local area that only the locals know about. I've spent time exploring this park and others. Is it really that rare?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonolite

These rocks are present in India too

Amazing. I think that's truly cool.

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