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Short Stuff: Trovants · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave. And
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: this is short stuff about trovants or trovins or droving.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: I bet it's travant. I don't know why I didn't
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: look it up, but I'm gonna go with that.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: It's gotta be. It doesn't matter. No one knows how
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: to pronounce it, no one outside of Romania. And the
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: reason I just mentioned Romania is because in the Carpathian
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: area of Romania, there's a specific kind of rock that
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: has captured the imagination of any human who's seen it
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: because they are very weird looking.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: In fact, they look like they're growing smaller rocks out
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: of the bigger rocks. Not supposed to happen to anybody
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: outside of the field of geology, but they are. And
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: so some people are like, these rocks are living, they
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: move around, they're gonna they're gonna kill you and your
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: entire family if if given the chance.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they have babies.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's amazing. Did you look up some of
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the pictures of them.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're awesome. They're pretty smooth looking, they're lumpy. Yeah,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: it looks you know, look up a picture of these things.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: You know, not if you're driving, obviously, but so you
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: can get it in your mind's eye. They can be little.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: They can be smaller than an inch and just way
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: a few grams, or they can be very very large,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: like boulder esque, like fifteen feet high, several tons in weight.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: And people since the eighteenth century have been like, what
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: are these things? They look like dinosaur eggs or alien pods?
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: What's happening here?
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And they were wrong on both accounts. They really
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: are rocks. They do grow, they do kind of calve
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: off baby rocks, but they're not alive in any sense
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: that we understand it. They're rocks.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: That's right. When they started getting serious and we're like, guys,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: can we move past alien pods and dinosaur eggs and
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: really try and figure this out.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I took it to be alien pods, is what people
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: are saying on the internet now.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Well, probably so, because that's where all that stuff takes place.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: But when they finally got serious, they were like, you know,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: what's going on here. This is a concretion, And a
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: concretion is something that starts out as a little pebble
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: or something or a leaf maybe, and then starts getting
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: depositions maybe sandstone, other kinds of grit and minerals washed
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: along a river, just building up and sort of cementing,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: almost like a snowball rolling downhill. That is a concretion, yes.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And in Oslo in two thousand and eight, the International
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Geological Conference congress.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Man to that place.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the rocks that they were doing, I'm sure, yeah,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: and they said, no, we don't think it's a concretion
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: at all. I don't know who they were scolding, because
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I'm sure all the members were the ones who came
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: up with the idea that it was a concretion. But
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: they said, no, this is different than that. A concretion
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: is a rock where you have a nucleus and then
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: over time sediments are deposited over it and it grows
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: and grows and grows. It's understandable why people said that
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: trovants were concretions for a very long time. But then
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: somebody thought to cut one open, and when they did,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: they said, there's no nucleus here. And with a typical
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: concretion rock, the sediments are whatever got attracted to it,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: so it's made up of a bunch of different stuff.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Turns out trovants are made entirely of sandstone, and in
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: particular they're made of calcium carbonate sandstone. So they're like,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: these are not concretions. What are they? We're not entirely certain,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: but we're going to take a stab at explaining them.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And they closed that session of the International Geological
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Congress and Oslo by chanting open bar, open bar, and.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: They all got busy.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: So they in Oslo they hypothesize that the minerals were
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: carried by a prehistoric river along these little sandy sediments
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: and formed a kind of a slurry solution, like you said,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: of mainly calcium carbonate. Along with calcium carbonate, you can
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: also get sandstone from iron oxide and quartz, but in
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: this case the sandstone is calcium carbonate.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, precisely. And so they figured out, okay, some sort
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: of compression took place, the force of gravity kind of
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: pushed these things together. And then apparently they were like
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: even more pushed together by earthquakes that took place back
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: in I think the Middle Miocene sub epoch, which as
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: everyone knows, is about five point three million years ago,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: and they smushed the sandstone together. And if you look
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: at a lot of the trovons, especially the parts that
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: are coming out of the ground. Yeah, it just looks
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: like a smushed normal rock, right, like pretty large. But
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't look weird. What makes it look
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: weird is the spherical shape rocks growing out of the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: other rocks. And that actually has to do with the
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: way that these rocks actually grow. And I say, Chuck,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: we take a break and we come back and talk
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: about how they grow after this.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. So another little oddity here we have
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: to talk about is the fact that these things secrete cement.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: And this is sort of what lends people to think
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: like these things are alive. It's after a big rain.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: They will absorb the minerals from that rain, and then
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: those minerals come in contact with the chemicals that are
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: already in that stone, that that calcium carbonate and the
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: other stuff, and there's a pressurized reaction that makes the
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: rock grow. It grows in girth, and that sandstone is
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: very porous, and so it's those places in between it's
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: not happening, like the whole thing's not growing at once.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: It'll be like a little pocket where this stuff, you know,
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: gets lodged and expands, and then it literally grows off
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: little pieces and they can fall off. And that's when
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: people are like, look, it had a little rock.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Baby, It had a baby. Yeah, So I mean that's it.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: That's how they grow rocks. A chemical reaction that creates
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: pressure in the rock that's so strong and they're so
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: porous that it can actually bubble up, and then over time,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: as it grows and grows and grows, it can take
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: on a spherical shape. Right, So that's pretty amazing. What
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: would be more amazing is if you could see this
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: happen in real time, but you can't because the human
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: lifespan is fairly short compared to how long it would
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: take to watch a trovont grow.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I think the deposition rate is about an
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: inch and a half maybe a couple inches every year. No,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: every hundred years, no, every five hundred years, no, every
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: thousand years. Yes, yeah, so an inch and a half
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: to two inches every one thousand years. That has not
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: stopped certain patient people from sitting there and looking at
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: them from a long time.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Though, right, Yeah, for sure. There was one researcher who
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: said that they filmed travants for two weeks and said
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: that not that they were growing, but that they were moving.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: This is another thing about it too, People say these
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: rocks move. And again, this is in Romania, in the
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Carpathian region. People have lived there for a really long time.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: They've lived around these rocks for a really long time.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: They've been observing them for a really long time. So
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: you can't exactly poop poo some of the things that
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: they've observed about these very special rocks. Yeah, and apparently
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: walking or moving is part of them. So this researcher
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: went and said, I filmed this thing moving at tenth
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: of an inch two and a half millimeters in two weeks,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: and and don't ask me for the film or any fallout.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, so what do you think of that?
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: And everyone's like, oh boy, this guy doesn't know there's
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: an open bar in the back right.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: So the thing is they're not discounting it fully that
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: these things can move, but the rocks wouldn't be moving, say,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: like the heating and cooling of the soil could cause
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: some sort of movement of the rocks moving them along.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: And there are rocks that that move. They don't move
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: by their own locomotion. There's not a rock in the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: world that moves by itself, even if it's rolling down hills,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it's under the force of gravity. But there are rocks
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: in uh oh, Death Valley. I think the sailing stones.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Have you seen them?
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I feel like we talked about those in a video.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: It sounded familiar, or maybe I just had heard of them.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: But they they leave a track behind them. They are
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: definitely moving, yeah, and they're too big for a human
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: to push as like a prank or a joke. Like
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the crop circles. Were figured out that the very thin
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: layers of ice form on the floor of Death Valley
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: sometimes and as it melts, it breaks into little sheets
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: that actually kind of move the rocks along for distances.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Amazing. Another pretty cool thing that they found out in
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Oslo where else is they're like, hey, how do we
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: explain the fact that we have found these fossils in here?
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Though these marine fossils, there's bivalves in here, there's gastropod
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: fossils sometimes, And they said, well, the best we can
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: come up with, and this makes total sense, is that
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: the area where they're found used to be an ancient
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: marine environment. Because they're finding those fossils in there and
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: also that calcium carbonate and we've kind of been holding
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: onto this till the end. That is the essential ingredient
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: in marine shells. So it seems pretty clear it was
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: probably a marine environment in ancient times.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Boom, Pretty cool the fact of the podcast.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there most of them are found it just
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: not even just Romania, but this one sand court, right.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen both. I've seen them that you can
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: find them around the Carpathia region, but there's definitely a
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: huge population of them in what's now the Trouvons Museum
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Natural Reserve in Valca County, Romania. And there's a village
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: in particular, Otosani Village, which is very well known for it,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: so much so that I think that's where the idea
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: that they can only be found there comes from. But
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: there's still I mean, you're not going to find them
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: in like Peru or Zimbabwe or something right there, just
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: in this very limited area of the world in Romania.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: That's right, So shout out to the Otasani village and
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: the other one is the Costesty Village.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Very nice, Chuck, And I guess since I said very nice,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: I don't have anything else to you.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: No, we should just let people know they're protected, like
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: so you can't go and break them and run off
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: with them. UNESCO is protecting these things.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Now, do not do that.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, don't do that.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Leave nature alone.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah that's right. But I have nothing else aside from that.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, short stuff is that?
• 11:06
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• 11:09
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• 11:14
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