Balancing Mysterious Stones on Frozen Lakes: Physics Today: Volume 75, Issue 9

parachute effect

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Choosetop of the pageAbstractParachute effect <stones in the labRetreat around the pedestalicy tablesAdditional Resources

In the case of water, the direct phase transition between solid and gas occurs at negative temperatures (in degrees Celsius) and in an extremely dry atmosphere. Moreover, it is a slow endothermic surface process, which therefore requires a constant flow of external energy. Sunlight does the job in nature, either directly in clear weather or diffused in overcast conditions. Sublimation causes ice to evaporate at a rate determined by temperature, humidity, and the amount of sunlight it receives. From the average winter solar radiation in the lake and the latent sublimation heat of the water, I estimate the sublimation rate of an ice surface to be about 2 mm per day.

Sublimation is not the only possible factor in play. The melting temperature of water decreases with applied pressure. And between 100 MPa and 1 GPa, ice can begin to melt at temperatures as low as -10 ° C. However, the pressures exerted by the zen stones on the ice remain well below this range, and any melting will only cause the pebble to sink into the ice. Moreover, ice is known to deform slowly over time – a phenomenon known as plastic creep – which explains why glaciers flow down mountains. But this also causes the stone to sink.

As another potential factor, small ice particles moved by wind can lead to mechanical erosion. But the smooth surface of the ice bases shows no evidence of erosion. The typical time required for ablation is much longer than the lifespan of a natural zen stone.

stones in the lab

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Choosetop of the pageAbstractparachute effectstones in the laboratory <Retreat around the pedestalicy tablesAdditional Resources

To convince my colleague at the University of Lyon, Nicholas Plehoun, and I of the simple sublimation hypothesis, we reproduced this phenomenon in a lab-scale experimental setting. We placed an aluminum disc—a proxy for stone—on the surface of a block of ice inside a commercial lyophilizer, a device whose temperature, pressure, and moisture favor sublimation. The external energy used to sublimate the ice did not come from sunlight but from infrared radiation from the walls of the vacuum chamber, which was kept at room temperature.

In the absence of stone, the extrusion is nearly isotropic and mimics the relative properties of natural sunlight diffused in cloudy weather. The significantly larger sublimation rate typically ranging from 8 to 10 mm per day allowed us to speed up the physical mechanism. In fact, obtaining zen stones from actual pebbles and tablets was easy.

Retreat around the pedestal

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Choosetop of the pageAbstractparachute effectstones in the labRetreat around the pedestal <icy tablesAdditional Resources

There is one interesting difference between natural and laboratory zen stones. In nature, snorkeling is always surrounded by icy feet. But this advantage has never been encountered in our laboratory experiments. While the canopy effect is clearly responsible for the formation of the pedestal, the detailed energy balance of the system reveals second-order phenomena. Like any other substance, ice and stone emit blackbody infrared radiation in a range whose intensity depends on the temperature and emission of the substance.

In nature, due to sunlight or ambient wind, ice and stone are unlikely to remain the same temperature all day. This, in turn, leads to an imbalance between them. More specifically, if the stone is a few degrees warmer than the ice, the infrared rays it radiates into the ice (as well as sunlight) can exceed those emitted by the ice itself. The effect becomes significant in later stages of zen stone formation – when the stone sits on a long, thin base – as thermal contact is reduced.

Therefore, two competing effects play a role: the canopy effect that protects the ice, and the excess energy from the stone, which instead speeds up the sublimation process and the formation of a cavity in the vicinity of the stone. While the former is responsible for the formation of the ice base early in the life of the zen stone, the latter is responsible for the formation of dipping around the ice foot in later stages.

Excess energy is absent in our experiment due to three factors: the lyoder was run in a large vacuum, metal was used for the zen stones, and these stones were smaller, all of which favor a good thermal balance between disk and ice.

icy tables

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Choosetop of the pageAbstractparachute effectstones in the labRetreat around the pedestalicy tables <Additional Resources

In addition to Zen stones, other interesting formations consisting of a rock resting on a thin base can be found in nature. In a hood, for example, a solid stone protects a tall column of brittle sandstone from erosion from rain and frost. And in the so-called glacier stream, a large boulder on a low-lying glacier ends on a long glacier. The latter case is similar to the zen stones of Lake Baikal because it involves differential extirpation of an ice surface. But the rock formation, shape and dynamics of glacial streams vary greatly.

Glacier streams appear on temperate glaciers where the ice (remaining at 0°C) simply melts due to warm ambient conditions. Depending on its size and shape, a rock on top of the ice can provide enough thermal insulation to impede snowmelt (a process that leads to the formation of the ice base) or increase the rate of snowmelt (a process that causes the rock to sink into the ice). A recent study showed that the differential ice melting of glacier streams is mostly caused by heat exchange with the surrounding air.

Thus, the canopy effect, which controls the formation of zen stones, is only a minor factor for glacier streams. Conversely, although thermal properties of the material, such as conductivity and specific heat, are essential for glacier streams, they are not important for the formation of zenstones. Any opaque object left on a mounting ice surface is likely to end up over a narrow foot. Indeed, far from the romantic image that a zen stone sometimes conjures, the frozen corpses of deceased penguins can sometimes be found in Antarctica perched atop narrow ice bases.