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WORD PICTURE OF THE DAY

TRAVELLERS’ tales about being suddenly swallowed by the desert sands may not be so fantastic as they appear.

Dutch scientists have recreated conditions that may sometimes arise when very fine sand is blown by the wind and settles to form a mass so loosely packed that it behaves like a liquid, swallowing up travellers and even vehicles whole.

"Objects often make a splash as they hit sand,” the team reports in Nature. “In this case, there was no splash, as expected, but a straight jet of sand shot violently into the air after about 100 microseconds.”