It may not have "disproved" it, but he appears to have discarded his original hypothesis.
From linked article:
> Floating ice may sometimes be ineffective at moving rocks since stones with low profile may be over-ridden by floating ice; rocks at the edges of ice panels may fail to sufficiently engage with floating ice to be moved, and rocks may be too massive for the available force (Fig. 8d).
> A surprise is the thinness of ice involved in rock movement. Ice sheets 3–6 mm thick are insufficient to float rocks off the playa surface, as proposed in some models [8], [11], and, in any case, we observed that ice melts first around rocks. However, moving sheets of ice tens of meters in extent but only a few millimeters thick are clearly effective at moving rocks in their path. Forces on stones increase when multiple sheets of ice pile on the upstream side of a rock and increase the effective surface area of the rock exposed to stresses of wind and flowing water (Fig. 8a).
Author's 2011 publication (citation #11):
> 11. Lorenz RD, Jackson BK, Barnes JW, Spitale J, Keller JM (2011) Ice rafts not sails: Floating the rocks at Racetrack Playa. American Journal of Physics 79: 37–42. doi: 10.1119/1.3490645
Abstract:
>> We suggest that the existence of many of the rock-carved trails at Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park is predominantly due to the effect of arbitrarily weak winds on rocks that are floated off the soft bed by small rafts of ice, as also occurs in arctic tidal beaches to form boulder barricades. These ice cakes need not have a particularly large surface area if the ice is adequately thick—the ice cakes allow the rocks to move by buoyantly reducing the reaction and friction forces at the bed, not by increasing the wind drag. The parameter space of ice thickness and extent versus rock size for flotation is calculated and found to be reasonable. We demonstrate the effect with a simple experiment.
Perhaps if you were reading something 1yr ago, it was in correlation to this new hypothesis, but this 2014 publication sits contrary to the 2011 publication.
From linked article: > Floating ice may sometimes be ineffective at moving rocks since stones with low profile may be over-ridden by floating ice; rocks at the edges of ice panels may fail to sufficiently engage with floating ice to be moved, and rocks may be too massive for the available force (Fig. 8d). > A surprise is the thinness of ice involved in rock movement. Ice sheets 3–6 mm thick are insufficient to float rocks off the playa surface, as proposed in some models [8], [11], and, in any case, we observed that ice melts first around rocks. However, moving sheets of ice tens of meters in extent but only a few millimeters thick are clearly effective at moving rocks in their path. Forces on stones increase when multiple sheets of ice pile on the upstream side of a rock and increase the effective surface area of the rock exposed to stresses of wind and flowing water (Fig. 8a).
Author's 2011 publication (citation #11): > 11. Lorenz RD, Jackson BK, Barnes JW, Spitale J, Keller JM (2011) Ice rafts not sails: Floating the rocks at Racetrack Playa. American Journal of Physics 79: 37–42. doi: 10.1119/1.3490645 Abstract: >> We suggest that the existence of many of the rock-carved trails at Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park is predominantly due to the effect of arbitrarily weak winds on rocks that are floated off the soft bed by small rafts of ice, as also occurs in arctic tidal beaches to form boulder barricades. These ice cakes need not have a particularly large surface area if the ice is adequately thick—the ice cakes allow the rocks to move by buoyantly reducing the reaction and friction forces at the bed, not by increasing the wind drag. The parameter space of ice thickness and extent versus rock size for flotation is calculated and found to be reasonable. We demonstrate the effect with a simple experiment.
Perhaps if you were reading something 1yr ago, it was in correlation to this new hypothesis, but this 2014 publication sits contrary to the 2011 publication.