Why don't the stones of Ram setu settle down... and keep floating?

Are you sure, that they are floating?

Yes Sir are!
I viewed one picture and even was told that they DO FLOAT.

In that case IMHO, they are not rock stones, the one's we encounter everyday, rather they must be some sort of biological products that have lots of air pockets (and I am not alone in thinking so! e.g. see the following blog http://virajgupta.blogspot.com/2008/05/mystery-of-floating-stones.html .

Pictures and heresy are often deceptive Can you tell me the source of these pictures and rumours

This blog entry has a video of floating stones and a decent natural explanation
http://virajgupta.blogspot.com/2008/05/mystery-of-floating-stones.html
To me it seems quite unlikely that so much air can be trapped inside, since most rocks are produced by 1) cooling magma (Igneous rocks), so the air would be blown away due to heat 2) or Sedimentary rocks, produced by sedimenting material under water, where there is no air. All the evidence that I have found on the internet is either from temples or in a protected enclosure, suggesting the possibility of fraud. It should be fairly easy to break a rock, make it hollow from inside and paste it back. It might be possible to stitch the rock back cleverly so the seam doesn't show. One of the videos that I have seen on YouTube clearly looks like a rock made from cement, in which case you can build it around a balloon or something so it has a cavity.

PS: I could not test the video on that blog so the link may not work, however, a search for 'floating stone' on YouTube will give you several hits.
PPS: More googling led me to the following link http://www.grandpacliff.com/ScienceEarth/FloatingRocks.htm , where you can learn about a kind of rock called Pumice that is born porous due to air pockets. But the explanation involves volcanos under water. But, this is not the kind of rock that I saw in those videos and my explanation seems correct to me.
PPS: I just now noticed that I have accidently hit the same page as hallenrm. When I read his post and clicked on his link, it did not work, so I googled a bit and lo and behold, I hit the same page!

yes.. I totally agree !!

one thing more.. Can there be any isotope or something of an element that could have a density lesser than water.. n which would probably render buoyancy to those stones?
n this isotope will be abundant around that shoreline only...?

Well, I believe you are a science graduate, have you ever come across such an isotope. The molecular weight of water is much more than that of any compound of carbon. Similarly think about all the compounds of elements lighter than Oxygen! you would have an answer to your question.

On the other hand think about objects that abound near shorelines, there are shells and sand. If due to any geological phenomenon they may be fused into rock like objects, than it may very well explain your curiosity. So, my suggestion to you would be to explore informatioon about all such objects

P.S. Well, I have solved the mystery why tarun could not open the page on the link provided by me. and i could not open the page linked to a URL provided by me, it is the comma or full stop after the link. So, the moral of this story is not to put a comma or full stop after pasting the URL of the link

A very informative blog, which I have linked below, answers many important questions regarding the Sethusamundaram project.
http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2007/09/ram-sethu-dummies-guide.html
In one of the responses to the replies posted there, the author points out that

Since the author is a geologist I can easily trust him on his words. My idea of fraudulently altering the rocks is far inferior to this idea.

It is not entirely clear what hallenrm is saying here. What has molecular weight got to do with density? Anushree, don't you know that isotopes have identical chemical properties, therefore, they can change the density of a compound only because their atomic weight is slightly different. I am sure that this difference cannot be more than a few per cent. The density of any material depends a lot more on the molecular structure, temperature and pressure than the molecular weight. You only need to consider the example of water, ice and steam, which are chemically the same but density-wise different. Also remember that if physical properties could be so different then Uranium enrichement would have been a trivial task.


I think Anushree's answer is implicit in one of the links that I have given in one of the posts above. If there were volcanic activity under the sea that creates pumice rock then you would find floating rocks on that shore. This is the reason why the geologist that I have linked above, is so confidently able to say that the rocks in Rameshwaram are imported.

Thanks Tarun for correcting me

Well on further thought, I think these objects that people have videographed or even seen could very well be fabricated from some plastics. We all know, how easy it is these days to fabricate such objects. For example can you believe that the rock looking object in the following photograph is made of a plastic rather than granite.

Source: http://patioandlawn.com/_wsn/page4.html
They appear no different in videos and no one will be allowed to touch them even because of the religious sentiments, leave aside make them available for chemical analysis

I think all the three quotes above can be integrated togather. True, that normally the density of any material depends a lot more on the molecular structure, temperature and pressure than the molecular weight. But, if we exclusively consider the two cases of liquid water and plastics like polyethylene or polystyrene, we can indeed reach an inference about their density only from their molecular weights. Because, the mass of a certain volume of water and that of an object made up of any of the above two mentioned polymers can indeed be correlated with their molecular weights! This is so because of the unique structure of liquid water, lots of hydrogen bonding. So, the average molecular weight of a carbon polymer (CH2)n is less than that of liquid water (considering liquid water (H2O)n as a virtual molecule in itself).

In conclusion to the question raised by Anushri:


We can safely say that the stones purported to be original stones of Ram setu, do not settle down just like all other natural rocks because they are the recent products of some chemical factory, made up of some synthetic polymers. They keep floating, simply because unlike natural rocks their density is less than that of water and they are not a product of some volcanic activity on Earth. They are part of a hoax to hoodwink Ram Bhaktas

I think pumice stones provide a much better explanation. They can be bought at 50 Pence a piece from the site below
http://www.infowest.com/life/20pumice.htm
So order now and befuddle your friends I also found the following Chinese site where they sell artificial pumice stones.
http://www.alibaba.com/catalog/11764336/Artificial_Pumice_Stone.html
The site claims to be able to make stones with any density, so I suppose they can make biggish stones that can float. Though the purpose of these artificial pumice stones seems to be less mythological

I don't think that religious minded people need any evidence to believe what they want to believe, this looks more like a tourist attraction to me.

The original question seems to have been forgotten:


According to the Ramayana, one of the members of the Vanara army, Nala, had the gift of being able to make stone float. So a lot of rocks were brought to him. He threw them on the sea and they floated. The army then crossed the sea on the bridge of floating rocks. If you are asking for a possible explanation for this story, it's different.

However, if you are talking about the actual geological structure, rather than the bridge mentioned in the Ramayana, it is certainly not floating! In fact, most of it is under water. For more about the structure, you could look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_Setu .

There is a controversy going on about whether the structure is artificial or man-made, but that has nothing to do with stones floating!

Incidentally, I visited Rameswaram many years back, and I don't remember any widespread claims about floating stones. It seems that this tourist attraction, as Tarun rightly calls it, is a fairly recent one.