Dry Quicksand

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Reports that travelers and even whole vehicles have instantaneously vanished by sand have often been dismissed as products of fantasy. Rightly so? Our latest experiments show that such a dry quicksand may exist, and that objects can sink up to many diameters deep into very loose, fine sand.

Traditional quicksand is created when water seeps up from an underground source and saturates an area of sand, silt, clay, or any other grainy soil. In reality, quicksand is very rarely more than a few feet deep, making it more of a messy nuisance than a life-threatening hazard. But......

There is another, more sinister flavor of quicksand called dry quicksand which is potentially a lot more dangerous, though there are no confirmed natural occurrences of the phenomenon. Dry quicksand is created when grains of sand form a very loose structure which can barely hold it own weight, like a house of cards. In the lab, it is created by causing air to flow through the sand, but it can theoretically be caused by the gradual buildup of very fine sand after it has been blown into the air. If an object of sufficient weight is placed on the dry quicksand, it will immediately sink, and the delicate structure will rapidly collapse in on itself, burying the object in the process. When this happens, the energy released by the collapse causes a jet of sand particles to shoot high into the air.

A deep, naturally occurring area of dry quicksand would be a formidable hazard, because it would cause anyone who stepped on it to sink and become buried very rapidly. No dry quicksand has ever been officially observed outside of the laboratory, but there are reports of travelers, vehicles, and even whole caravans suddenly vanishing into the sandy earth. These reports have always been viewed as mere folklore, but perhaps there is more to the stories than we realize. Science does not completely dismiss the possibility of naturally occurring dry quicksand; in fact, during the planning of the Apollo moon missions, scientists added large plates to the ends of the Lunar Module legs to help support the craft in case the astronauts found dry quicksand on the moon... but the precaution proved unnecessary, since no such soil was encountered.

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[VincentValentine417]

of course there's a string how do you think they are going to get the ball back without opening everything up?

[killman9999]

looks like a slow motion of a ball falling in paint

[Oxylepy]

I love the violent jet of sand at the end, very cool, almost as if it's falling into water with how rapidly it descended, and if someone were to be unlucky enough to stumble onto a patch of dry quicksand, I imagine it would be just like the stories.

[SarraPiyopiyo]

@Guidogregotti It's hypothesized that it exists in the world. There have been reports of people and cars being lost to this stuff... The lunar lander had the dish shaped plates on it's feet for fear of the moon being covered in this stuff, apparently... I'm sure someone will find some of this in the world, live, and tell others about it. XD

[Maggynus]

@ipod014 you would die really really fast and have no way of getting out....

[DutchMileyLover]

The guy who made this up is going to be my teacher.

[sassy123123123]

Corstarch!

[starfire110]

cool

[Guidogregotti]

I had always believed that this kind of quicksand was a fantasy!

The only time I have seen this quicksand was in a scene of a telefilm (Manimal) and in a couple of novels of "Star Trek - New Frontier" there was a similar phenomenon. But probably, this kind of quicksands is real?

Guido.

[ipod014]

I wonder what would happen if I was in that.

[josephoo7]

this is real, it is from sand that has been recently had air blown through it and very small grain diameters. Think of it as a solid cloud.