Sand Dunes Shouldn’t Exist (Here’s Why They Do)

↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓

How can sand, blown by the wind, form such intricate and beautiful patterns as ripples and dunes? The answer is a surprising secret of self-organization. In this video, we travel to Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado to climb the largest sand dunes in North America and bring you the science of how wind and sand combine to create ordered landforms out of chaos. The science must flow.

Thank you to Dr. Mathieu Lapôtre (Stanford) and Dr. Orencio Duran Vinent (Texas A&M) for helpful discussions while researching this epsiode.

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[haipengli]

As a geologist, I can say the video is taking popular science to a whole new level. The content is so accessible yet accurate 👍

[Tavaloux]

As an Arab, I’ve witnessed and hated how invasive sand can get my whole life. It’s awesome to know about the scientific aspect of dune formation. My morning commute would be much more enjoyable now. Thank you!!

[Shargur]

Wow, that was a pretty long ad for Dune, lol.

[XtReMz]

As a Canadian pilot, I remember how impressed and startled I was the first time I passed through the Denver/Eagle Colorado area on a clear day. These dunes are clearly visible even at 39000’. There is a gradual transition westward toward gravel and redish rock formation as you approach the Grand Canyon.

Even Bob Ross could not describe the marvelous mix of colors that the midwest displays from high up.

[CarmelloYello]

I just had a psychedelic mushroom trip into the Colorado dunes a few weeks ago and it was one of the most spiritual and amazing experience of my life. The ripples and the texture of the sand added so much to that day!

[robhacklblumstein]

Releasing a video about dunes the week that Dune premieres in the US? Joe knows that if you walk with (the algo)rhythm, then you might attract the views.

[HarmlessX]

I live in Namibia and walk the dunes everyday with dogs. This makes me appreciate it more when I normally take it for granted

[DavidFMayerPhD]

Story about the Normandy landing. About 3 months before the landing, volunteers were taken to rowing distance from the beach by a submarine. The men were given black uniforms and had their faces blackened. Each was provided with an inflatable raft (black, of course) and a number of glass jars with lids and a black grease pencil. Each jar had a blank label attached. The volunteers' assignment was to row ashore, and collect samples of the sand on the beach, marking each with its location, then return to the submarine with the samples. The volunteers thought that the assignment was nuts, but they did as they were told. The carefully marked samples were later used to determine which locations would support the various vehicles to be landed without bogging them down.

[ruler]

I'm Canadian. Snow drifts are similar. So its interesting how similar it is despite being from different climates entirely. Even in cold icy wind the snow feels what i assume is similar to a sand storm when it stings you.

[astrospeedcuber]

I've never realised how greatly these videos are made - its so cohesive, educational, understandable and informational while being very enjoyable and interesting!

[JohnFleshman]

I lived in Florence Oregon in the mid 80s and lived my teens in the dunes just outside my yard. Never knew Frank Herbert based the story Dune because of the dunes of coastal Oregon.

[edgar-sama]

"i don't like sand it's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere"
- Anakin Skywalker

[JannPoo]

13:32 "In that story the complex interplay of life and sand on the desert world Arrakis is threatened with collapse at the hand of humans."

That's a rather interesting take on the theme of Dune. There is certainly a will from the Fremens to terraform Arrakis into a more hospitable place to live, a goal that is eventually reached after a few centuries, but it's never described as a "threat", and you make it sound like a side-effect of something else, like pollution, while it is a deliberate goal. The spice-farming itself has absolutely no impact in the ecological system of Dune.

In the end Frank Herbert was tasked to find a way to "tame" dunes and deserts and his book is about that, not "respecting nature".

It should also be noted that Arrakis wasn't originally a desert world, it was in fact a verdant planet like Earth and if there's a lifeform responsible for transforming it into a desert where almost nothing can survive it's the sandworms.

[fe]

The real question is, after sand gets blown in a particular direction more than other directions, where does more sand come from? Or does dunes/ sandy deserts move overtime to other locations?

[FlubberGamer]

It’s incredible how you can find these beautiful patterns within nature, from the ripples caused by the oceans waves, to massive hills laid out in similar, yet vastly larger ripples. All you have to do is to look into the math of it all and you’ll gain a greater appreciation of the beauty of seemingly “simple” things like the dunes for example. I think one of the coolest examples of math in nature explaining a “system” that to us is supposedly chaotic or random, is the equation to calculate the “roughness” of costal lines. I can recall exactly what it was called, but it was found by the man who discovered the Mandelbrot set. This was at a time when we believed it to be possible to “create” a geometric shape not found to be already “created” within nature, there is a beautiful TedTalk by Benoit Mandelbrot on fractals and the art of roughness where he talks about all of this with more wisdom than I would be able to convey in this comment alone, so I suggest anyone interested in this topic, and with a bit of patience to really understand something somewhat complex, to check it out.

[ditsaa]

The final touch with William Blake's lines, beautiful! Yes, the sand dunes inspire you to think about something way bigger & larger, and they're very beautiful for that reason.

[DonBeardy]

Joe with glowing eyes through sunglasses is intimidating

[daemn]

One of the cool things about Great Sand Dunes National Park is how the dunes are constrained to that area. There are two small creeks that run from the mountains to the north and east of the park, down around the sides of the dunes and peter out in a generally SW direction. The prevailing SW winds push the dunes in a NE direction until they encounter those creeks and then the sand is carried back down by the water around the sides to the SW and deposited there as the water disappears into the sand. Rinse.. repeat.

[areyouavinalaff]

4:45 sections of our local beach can look like this at low tide, which reveals the interaction between sand and water. It's the same as the boundary between two liquids of signigicantly different densities, between air and water, water and sand, air and sand. As you said earlier, sand behaves as a liquid, although fluid would be a better term. Sand, air and water can all exhibit fluid dynamics.

[blackhorseman]

Remember that sand moving creates a static charge that can last similar to a battery for weeks or sometime months. Like those "Sand Worms" with lightning around them. Pretty cool "Dune" included that fact.