Scientific explanation for Bermuda Triangle?

EDIT: Ok, so Oolon found a place and that would naturally mean to keep my word I consider this solved but I think the link Oolon posted actually strengthens the Bermuda Triangles case in that they both share record of magnetic disturbance.

Honestly, how many times can it be added up as just an accident by choppy seas and peoples mistakes? Eventually there has to be a better reason than that for such high incident rates. Especially for a place like that to have more mysterious occurences than such a busy area like the Bermuda Triangle. I doubt that more people pass this "Great Lakes Triangle" than pass through the Bermuda Triangle yet it would appear MORE unexplained accidents occur there. So I think the "heavy traffic" idea can be thrown out here unless I'm just way off and this area in the great lakes is more popular.

Great stuff, thanks for the link Oolon and if u ever hear of another listing of that show please let me know cause I can't get enough of this stuff.
 
Joshua Korosi said:
Pirates - or to be more specific, their modern-day counterparts the drug-runners, are a very real threat and by no means extraordinary claims.
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i can only speak anecdotally, but i know a bunch of people that sail here and there (as opposed to day pleasure boaters), and all of them are deathly afraid of piracy. i'm not so sure it actually happens that much anymore but there is definitely a culture of fear surrounding it.
 
I seem to recall reading recently that one of the planes from Flight 19 was found by divers somewhere off the coast of Florida. But I can't find a link to anything. Anyone?
 
I'm really not too familiar with the "facts" of the Bermuda Triangle, but I would have thought that much of it could be accounted for by reference to the Texas-sharpshooter fallacy. That is, given the amount of shipping and air travel that occurs, both across the world and across time, you would expect there to be a lot of disappearances, etc. Some of these would be "lost without a trace" and of these, some would cluster. Just so happens that the Bermuda Triangle has a cluster of these incidents, nothing unusual about such an area existing. If The Great Lakes Triangle is another such cluster (another area with high rates of shipping, air travel) it would hardly be surprising.

BTW, what was the last "great" disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle? With the advent of better technology for tracking, search and rescue, etc, one would expect the rates of disappearances to be decreasing, even with increased traffic.

Edited: for punctuation.
 
There is no Bermuda Triangle, and that is the end of that tale.

Large waves are real. They could easily make a large ship disappear. I recall a large "rogue wave" being spotted by a satellite recently.

The Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared very quickly. It was a big mystery until they found her. She simply sank in a storm that was too much for her.
 
krelnius said:
then how does one explain such ships as the USS Cyclops?
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What's to explain? Remember this: Ferry sinks in Red Sea.

That's a relatively modern well-equipped ship that sank suddenly and unexpectedly. A rescue effort was mounted immediately, yet only around 400 people - out of 1400 - were found alive. Of the ship itself, not a trace. Yet the position of the ship was precisely fixed by an automatic rescue beacon, and modern rescue ships and helicopters were available to assist the rescue effort.

Now imagine that none of these modern rescue methods were available, and that the ship's position was not known, and furthermore that nobody realised the ship was missing until it failed to make landfall. How many survivors would you expect? How much wreckage would you expect to find - bearing in mind you don't know where to look for it?

Worse things happen at sea, you know.

Edited to add: In fact worse things happen at sea a lot more often than you'd think.

Over the last two decades more than 200 super-carriers - cargo ships over 200m long - have been lost at sea. Eyewitness reports suggest many were sunk by high and violent walls of water that rose up out of calm seas.

...

"Two large ships sink every week on average," said Wolfgang Rosenthal, of the GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany. "But the cause is never studied to the same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to 'bad weather'."
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Egads.
 
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Many years ago, I recall reading a critical analysis of the first Bermuda Triangle book, possibly in Skeptical Inquirer. The authors pointed out that the book contained large numbers of outright lies and fabrications; ships that had supposedly sunk without a trace were still merrily sailing the area, for instance.

The statistical rate of accidents, sinkings, plane crashes, etc. in the "triangle" (an arbitrarily chosen area at best) are no higher than for any other heavily-travelled ocean.
 
The Bermuda triangle myth was one of the first things I investigated in depth on my way to become a full-fledged skeptic. I fail to remember details, but it is explained by a combination of the following:

- Lies. A number of the tales, for instance in Berlitz' book, are partly fabricated, at least changed to suit the myth. For example, The Mary Celeste did not disappear; there are records of the ship coming on auction in Spain.

- Heavy traffic. The recorded accident rate, as a function of thraffic density is not extraordinary for the area.

- Natural conditions. Depths varying from shallow to many miles, unstable and unpredictable weather will account for alot of sudden accidents.

Now for some of the more exotic theories:

- Magnetic disturbances: In this area, there are a lit of thunderstorms, especially in late summer. These will cause a lot of disturbances to a range of navigational and communication equipemnt, although not to your old-fashioned magnetic compass.

- Gas eruptions: I consider this very doubtful. The only simulations of this, I have seen, took place in a closed vessel. In the open sea, it is a different situation. Buoyancy is really a question of pressure differentials. A ship floats because the upwards pressure on its hull is greater than its weight (sure, this has something to do with densities, but it is the pressure that does the job). For a gas eruption to sink a ship, it is not enough that the density of the water is lowered (by gas bubbles), the pressure must also fall. This can easily happen within the walls of a test container, but in the open sea, the surrounding water will not just stand there around an area with low pressure. Instead it will crash in, and press the the column of "gassed" water upwards, just like you see it after an underwater explosion (like a depth charge). For sure, such an eruption might sink a ship, but after all, most of the surface of the sea is not covered with ships. For such a thing to sometimes happen right under a ship, it must be a quite frequent occurrence, and I have not heard that giant geysers are frequently observed in the area.

Of course, we have already spotted the posting habit of this poster: Ask innocently (and in roughly the same wording) about some phenomenon, then vehemently deny all explanations given. You're not the first, you won't be the last :rolleyes:.

Hans
 
LTC8K6 said:
There is no Bermuda Triangle, and that is the end of that tale.

Large waves are real. They could easily make a large ship disappear. I recall a large "rogue wave" being spotted by a satellite recently.

The Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared very quickly. It was a big mystery until they found her. She simply sank in a storm that was too much for her.
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http://www.corfid.com/gl/Albums/Summertime_Dream/The_Wreck_Of_the_Edmund_Fitzgerald.htm

"For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call 'Gitche Gumee'.
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early!"
 
As someone who lives in Bermuda I'd just like to add to the discussion by noting that people here are not concerned about things vanishing into the Triangle, nor are marine insurance rates increased for going through the Triangle.

Sorry, but as far as I can tell there is no mystery to solve. The area is one of the busiest shipping lanes (all ships from the Gulf of Mexico enroute to Europe and vice versa go through the area). The only thing the Triangle has been good for is selling souvenir t-shirts. I feel sorry for the Bahamas since many of the Bahamas islands are actually in the Triangle (as opposed to Bermuda, which is just a point of it) yet Bermuda gets the t-shirt revenue. :)

As for unusual things in the sea that could cause a ship disappearance I suspect that Freak Waves could have been responsible for a number of them. A cruise ship, the Norwegian Dawn, was hit by one in either 2004 or 2005 and I don't think a smaller ship would have had much of a chance. Look in wikipedia under 'freak wave' for more details. However freak waves happen anywhere in the oceans, not just the Triangle.
 
krelnius said:
***snip***

Honestly, how many times can it be added up as just an accident by choppy seas and peoples mistakes?

***snip***
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Since when has human stupidity become a finite commodity? Throw the formidible wrath of Mother Nature into the mix, and you've got yourself a virtually inexhaustible supply of disaster scenarios.

The statistics of the situation demonstrate that there is nothing unique or mysterious about "the Bermuda triangle." Draw a similar sized triangle around any other portion of the planet with busy shipping/airline traffic (i.e.- The English Channel, The Straits of Gibraltar, etc...) and you'll see that there is nothing at all anomolous taking place in "the Bermuda triangle."

The world's largest insurer of shipping in the world, Lloyd's of London, doesn't add a "bermuda triangle" surcharge for ships which ply the waters of "the triangle". This is a company who has been tracking the statistics on shipping losses since before Admiral Nelson was personally bolstering the tally of sunken ships. If there were an inordinate amount of shipping losses taking place in the area, they most certainly would adjust their rates accordingly. They don't, because there isn't. It's as simple as that.
 
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"The Bermuda Triangle is not the only zone of mystery on the Earth. The Great Lakes have an even higher concentration of unexplainable ship disappearances than anywhere else in the world."

http://mimufon.org/1980 articles/T...esTriangle.htm
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As a Kingstonian, I can definently say that the Marysburgh Vortex is not well known. At all. I used to be heavily into woo as a kid, and I've never heard of it. I have heard about the unusual compass readings (I seem to recall something about a deposit of Iron), but the "Breakdown" of physics is totally new to me.
 
"Over the last two decades more than 200 super-carriers - cargo ships over 200m long - have been lost at sea. Eyewitness reports suggest many were sunk by high and violent walls of water that rose up out of calm seas."

Ahh, yes ... Rogue Waves. Quite an interesting phenomina.
 
Before one even need provide a 'scientific explanation' for the Bermuda Triangle, it would have to be established that ships and/or planes disapear there with any greater frequency than in any other similar part of the ocean. Good luck with that.
 
TriangleMan said:
nor are marine insurance rates increased for going through the Triangle.
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Yes. The most compelling evidence I've heard that there is nothing peculiar about the Bermuda Triangle is that Lloyd's of London doesn't charge any more for insurance for shipping through it. If anyone knows the risks of going through the Bermuda Triangle, it's going to be the companies that insure the ships and cargo.
 
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