In Romania, fancy stones that grow in size are called Trovantes. Local residents and the very shape of the stones speak about this.
The village with the largest number of such stones is called Costesti. They even set up an open-air museum.
Information about the increase in the size of the trowels comes from local residents. But I did not find any reliable scientific information about this phenomenon.
Breakaway trovant. The layered structure of the stone is visible. Annual rings?
But besides the increase in the size of large stones, local residents noticed that small breakaway stones were also increasing in size. Especially after the rains. And all stones are able to "multiply" by budding. After rains, a bulge appears on the stones, it slowly grows and after it becomes huge, it breaks off under its own weight.
Promotional video:
This is how the legend was born that the Trovantes are living stones. And, perhaps, they have a different form of life, mineral or silicon.
Although, this version even visited scientific minds. At one time, the geochemist and founder of Russian mineralogy, academician Alexander Fersman, expressed such a hypothesis.
There is information that stones with such a life form can even move.
In Death Valley in one of the dry lakes in the United States. Indeed, a trace remains. Although, no one filmed this phenomenon on video.
The facts are interesting, but no one is going to study these phenomena.
* Kidney * on trovante.
An example of how, in the process of growth, the Trovant threw off the shell and the inner breed of a different color was exposed.
Even fewer people know that stones like trowans exist in other places, for example:
In the Oryol region, Russia.
Swelling slabs.
Kolomenskoye. Devi stone.
Many have guessed, probably, why it is called Devi-stone …
Another example with a similar phenomenon is stone flowers.
The Chinese inhabitants of these places claim that stone flowers do not always grow. Appear and then disappear for several years.
There is a lot of esoteric information on the Internet regarding the growth mechanism of these stones. If we discard the unprovable versions and try to understand the physics of the phenomenon? Will it work? At the time of writing this article and looking for information, I was not sure about this. But I managed to get something out. So what does geology say?
But I did not find scientific and detailed information on how the growth of trovants occurs. But I found other information about rocks expanding in water.
Suppose that trowants and similar stones, rocks are in the past cold fluidolites, geo-concrete. It is in the process of petrification, but when water gets in, the processes stop and an increase in mass occurs. But why?
The answer was found in the modern construction industry in describing the process of increasing the size of concrete. I quote briefly the most important and understandable information:
I also came across interesting information about the rock, bentonite clays:
If we assume that trowants contain this rock, clay, then when water gets inside the stone from rain, through cracks and chips, it begins to swell like yeast dough!
This information confirms the fact that if a piece breaks off from the trovant, then it begins to increase in size.
Bentonite clay. The color is the same as the color of the Trovant breed.
Bentonite clay is used in construction (waterproofing) and in drilling:
Perhaps these are deposits of petrified bentonite clay. The water got into the reservoir and it was so fantastically blown up with bubbles.
But what makes the breed harden? Most likely carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This rock needs CO2 to gain strength (carbonation).
The crust of the trowans is constantly growing, sometimes acquiring such layering as in the photo:
But what if, along with the increase in volume, the weight of the stone also increases?
If someone did research and confirm this, it would be a scientific sensation in the field of geology. Many processes and the formation of many minerals would have to be revised. All this requires verification and research. But for some reason no one is doing this.
In our examples, we'll go further:
Granite blocks look like loaves of bread - just as swollen. What if it's not natural granite, but an imitation of it? Also made of geo-concrete with an admixture of sand as a filler? The blocks were molded, they gained strength and increased in size, and only then they began to process them - to display them in a plane.
The same "loaves" in Sacsayhuaman. The rock also swelled when it gained strength and was wetted by rains or the ingress of atmospheric moisture into the rock through the pores.
Mountain Shoria. I believe that natural granite and syenite are mineral rocks, not igneous. And in them, after their exits to the surface, swelling processes also took place when moisture ingress.
Also Mountain Shoria. "Swollen stones". There are many such examples from various places.
The processes taking place in trowants are also found in other minerals and formations:
Concretions of marcasite.
Pyrite. It seems that a finger has grown.
There are examples of giant nodules. They are covered with shells, which cracked with increasing size, and the cracks were filled with a mass growing from the inside, which also petrified in air.
Mineral hematite. iron oxides Fe2O3.
Malachite can grow like a trovant. I think the increase in its volume can explain these "annual rings" and the pattern of the mineral.
These are just sketches and hints for modern geology, saying that not everything in mineralogy has been studied and not everything is clear. There are clear questions to be investigated. This should be done by science in the person of some scientific research institute of geology.