In Josephine Tey’s 1952 novel “The Singing Sands,” a police inspector gets caught up in a murder investigation involving an enigmatic poem: “The beasts that talk, The streams that stand, The stones that walk, The singing sand…”
While the story is fiction, singing sand is very real, found in Indiana, Japan, Egypt, and California. Many, like those in Dunhuang, China, have become tourist attractions.
A low, vibrational hum emanates from sand spilling down dunes in these locations, sometimes loud enough to be heard 6 miles away. Certain conditions, like the size, shape, and silica content of the sand, have to align to produce the singing, according to NOAA.
Just why the frequencies of the tumbling sand sound like music is still a mystery, according to a 2012 study.
