I saw a special on the Bermuda triangle http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_067.html that gave a pretty descent hypothesis of the bermuda triangle. Get this–there are pockets of methane gas under the earths crust, in excess in this particular location. sometimes, when pieces of the coast slide down into the deep, they rupture these pockets sending the gas to the surface. Boats sink because the water gets less dense with the addition of gas and get buried when the debree settles back on top. Planes blow up suddenly because methane is explosive. this is why they seldom call for help, it’s too late! Is there anything to this or am i a little naive?
[[Note - I have edited Metro’s post so the link now works (I hope) – CKDH ]]
[Note: This message has been edited by CKDextHavn]
metroshane, see if you can find a copy of Larry Kusche’s book The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved. It was originally published in '75 as a response to Berlitz and other loonies. (I heard it was reprinted a couple of years ago, but I haven’t seen it.)
Kusche goes through nearly every one of Berlitz’s fantasies and shows where we really have the actual answers for most of the disappearances. (Most common causes for ships: they left on a “clear, calm day”–and their course took them directly through the path of a hurricane several days later. Most common causes for planes: known navigational errors or known faulty equipment.) Kusche also showed that a significant number of “Bermuda Triangle” incidents did not even happen in that area.
There is no Bermuda Triangle and we don’t need to look for mystical/magical/extraterrestial/psychic/wierd-science explanations for a phenomenon that does not exist.
The frequency of disappearances in the Bermuda triangle is no different than is is for any other area, considering the amount of traffic and the fact that the Bermuda-Triangle conspirators conveniently re-draw the dimensions of the area to include more missing vessels.
I’ve heard of the gaz (methane? I don’t remember) pocket phenomenon. I don’t remember it being associated to the Bermuda Triangle. What supposedly happens is that pockets brake free from the crust and rise, imagine either a giant bubble or a whole set of normal-sized bubbles. In the once-in-blue-moon event that the bubble rises under a ship, the ship suddenly finds itself supported by nothing more than gaz. The ship suddenly falls bellow its water line, the water closes over the deck, and the ship sinks. Nobody ever survived to tell the tale, but there is one video shot from a helicopter that did capture the phenomenon, maybe. It’s fast, the boat had completely disappeared in a minute. It’s like the boat sank from everywhere at once. I remember vaguely only, so I can’t say that’s what it was for sure.
I’ll admit there isn’t enough evidence to conclude to the existence of the phenomenon with complete certainty, but I don’t think it can be dismissed out of hand. Has anyone else seen that video? It must be ten or fifteenn years old by now.
I saw a brief excerp from the methane-ship-sinking footage. It was on one of those “Unsolved Mysteries” genre TV shows that was talking about the BT. However, the clip was only about a second long, so I didn’t see much.
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
As the BT has been so well debunked (including by a nice Nova episode, for those who don’t care to read off-line) I will change the subject to other loony triangles. A guy wrote a little book about a “Lake Michigan Triangle” to capitalize on the BT craze. (I’m afraid it’s rather pathetic but was worth the 25¢ I paid.) Are there any other bogus triangles out there, with or without books?
I might have seen the same special. If so, I was very disappointed because it was hosted by none other than James Burke, whose other series (Connections, “Universe,” etc) have been very interesting.
How different life would have been if they’d been investigating the Bermuda Duodecihedron, say, instead of a boring old triangle. Even the Bermuda Rhomboid, you gotta admit, has some class.
At the height of the Berlitz and von Däniken(sp?) crazes in the early 70’s (which overlapped as von D’s space invaders returned to Berlitz’s triangle to check out how their ancient handiwork had proceeded), there was a brief flurry of “triangles” discovered all over the world. After Krusche’s book came out (or maybe it was Krusche in his closing chapters), some scruffy skeptic pointed out that all the triangles were areas where there was a lot of commerce (marine and aircraft) over water, out of sight of land. The decriptions of disappearances also followed the same pattern: known faulty equipment and storms arising after a ship had cleared the breakwall. They then pointed out that disasters at sea are often never explained because things sink in water. (Imagine that!)
During the height of the Triangle flap I recall reading a book by, I believe, Ivan T. Sanderson about the subject. The author seemed convinced that the UFOs were from native intelligences which live under the oceans. He charted a number of “vortexes” where unusual numbers of traffic has been lost. I recall clearly that he had covered almost half the oceans with these zones of terror, and I determined that it was not unusual that ships and planes had been lost in just those areas where ships and planes travel!
I don’t know if any of Sanderson’s work is still in print, but he is a great study for credulity.
Dr. Fidelius, Charlatan
Associate Curator Anomalous Paleontology, Miskatonic University
“There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be.”
-Charles Sanders Pierce
I also got to see some explanations taken from Larry Kushche’s book “Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved”. Is interesting to note that everything that disappears are ships and planes over water… As Carl Sagan said: “Why I haven’t heard of buses or trains disappearing?”