Unusual stones that ring like bells are found all over the world

Ringing stones are stones that ring like bells when struck by a hammer. The rocks are located in various locations around the world, but the most famous locations located in southeastern Pennsylvania include the Rock Garden (Haycock, Bucks County), Devil's Race Track (Franklin County), others in the Southern Mountains region and Pottsdown, and the Bell Rock Range in Western Australia and in Russia (Kandalaksha, Murmansk Region).

When you hit a rock, you usually expect to hear a dull sound, in extreme cases a click, but not a ringing sound. However, ringing rocks exist in nature: in the Park of ringing rocks on the territory of 128 acres there are huge boulders-a unique natural phenomenon. If you hit any stone with a hammer, it will ring.

American settlers learned about the stones from Native Americans in the 1700s. This ringing is a sound so unexpected that it seems as if the stones are metal and hollow. For many years, the strange phenomenon has baffled scientists and geologists. Several experiments were carried out on the stones, but the nature of the phenomenon remained unclear. Pennsylvania geologist Richard Faas examined several rocks in a laboratory in 1965.

He found that when struck, each individual stone produces a sound at low frequencies that the human ear does not perceive, but several stones interact with each other, and this sound a person is already able to hear. The rocks are made up of a volcanic substance called diabase. There is nothing special about it: it is a mixture of ironstone and other hard rocks, like all stones. Some scientists believe that the ringing is responsible for the pressure of the rock inside the stones.

There is another oddity. Most of the stone fields arise from the fact that the mountain is destroyed, and a landslide comes down. The ringing stones, however, are not at the foot of the mountain or even on the slope, but at the very top. There were never any glaciers here. How the stones got to the top of the mountain remains a mystery.

There is also almost no vegetation or animals in this area — not even insects live among the ringing stones. Some people claim that compasses stop working in this place, but no traces of high background radiation, abnormal magnetic fields or strange electromagnetic activity have been found here.

Ringing stones in Kandalaksha, Murmansk region, Russia

There is a hair hill in Kandalaksha. It attracts tourists ringing stones — a unique natural object, around which there are legends. There is no exact explanation why if you hit a stone, it makes a thin, pleasant metallic sound.

Scientists believe that it generates microcracks, which are dotted with stones. Because of them, there is a resonance of vibrations and a certain buzzing of the entire monolith. The peoples that inhabited the Kola Peninsula for hundreds of years believed that spirits live in the stones and they are endowed with magical properties. That is why the stones were found on the ancient Sami temple.

During the study, it turned out that the rock of ringing stones contains ultrabasic minerals, in particular, olin, as well as a small percentage of nickel metals. They call it ultrabasite.

Now the stones are under threat. They are destroyed by precipitation and frost, because of which microcracks grow and stones crumble. As well as tourists who are careless about the natural attractions.

Ringing stones are also found in other parts of the world, for example, in Khakassia.