They eventually discovered that the playa would occasionally flood, then freeze at night, trapping the rocks in the ice, and wind would then push the ice sheets with the rocks embedded, which would cause the tracks that gave the area its name.
> “Nobody’s lives depend on this,” says Bartholomaus
it would actually be pretty cool to see glaciers covered in greenery rather than have them melt away into nothing, maybe more of these things would be helpful
it unironically sounds like a climate initiative cultivate and mutate these to be faster growing, especially given that they seem to shield the ice beneath. what a neat substrate for a plant
They tracked the balls for two months, if it was easy to see that they always move X direction during a sunny day they would know. That is likely the first thing they checked, we know that plants can turn to face the sun.
> In 1950, Icelandic researcher Jón Eyþórsson came across a gathering of fuzzy green puff balls, the size of small gerbils, scattered across Hrútárjökull Glacier in the southeast of the country. Curiously, the mossy balls weren’t attached to the ground, and many were green on all sides, indicating they must slowly turn so that the entire exterior sees the sun at some point, theorized Eyþórsson. That fall, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Journal of Glaciology. “I call these mossy balls Jökla-mýs, literally ‘glacier mice,’” he wrote, “and you will have noted, Sir, that rolling stones can gather moss.”
> [...]
> Glacier moss balls can grow up to about eight inches long before they fall apart, and can live at least six years. The one on the right was tagged with beads by researchers.
Doesn't show movement but shows how they look in the wild, even has a cracked one that is about to form two new balls. You clearly see they aren't just mossy stones, since there are stones lying around with no moss, it is more like a colony of moss balls.
I can easily imagine early life looking like that.
They eventually discovered that the playa would occasionally flood, then freeze at night, trapping the rocks in the ice, and wind would then push the ice sheets with the rocks embedded, which would cause the tracks that gave the area its name.