Imagine standing in the heart of a sun-scorched desert. The wind hushes, the world holds its breath, and suddenly, a deep, thunderous boom rolls across the sand—so startling and powerful, it seems as ...

The movement of sediment into the back beach environment ... Only a small group of plants are capable of colonising sand dunes (Hesp 1991). Nevertheless, in contrast to most desert dunes ...

Riddles remain (the movement of small particles is a complicated, chaotic business), but one thing about dunes has never been in doubt: their solidity. “For sand to accumulate in a way that ...

This story appears in the November 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine. I got my first lesson in the physics of sand dunes in 1998 on an expedition into the Sahara. In order to take aerial ...