How Deep Is The Water In The Bermuda Triangle

Bermuda Triangle: Where Facts Disappear

The Bermuda Triangle (also known equally the Devil's Triangle) is an expanse bounded past points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico where ships and planes are said to mysteriously vanish into thin air — or deep h2o.

Recently, some people have wondered if there is a Bermuda Triangle connexion in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flying MH370, fifty-fifty though the jet went missing halfway around the world.

The term "Bermuda Triangle" was coined in 1964 past writer Vincent Gaddis in the men'south pulp magazine Argosy. Though Gaddis first came up with the phrase, a much more famous name propelled it into international popularity a decade afterward. Charles Berlitz, whose family created the pop series of language education courses, also had a strong interest in the paranormal. He believed not simply that Atlantis was real, but also that it was connected to the triangle in some way, a theory he proposed in his bestselling 1974 book "The Bermuda Triangle." The mystery has since been promoted in thousands of books, magazines, television shows, and websites.

Over the years, many theories have been offered to explain the mystery. Some writers have expanded upon Berlitz's ideas about Atlantis, suggesting that the mythical metropolis may prevarication at the bottom of the ocean and exist using its reputed "crystal energies" to sink ships and planes. Other more fanciful suggestions include fourth dimension portals (why a rift in the space-time cloth of the universe would open upwardly in this item patch of well-traveled sea is never explained) and extraterrestrials — including rumors of underwater alien bases.

Notwithstanding others believe that the caption lies in some sort of extremely rare and little–known — nonetheless perfectly natural — geological or hydrological explanation. For example, perhaps ships and planes are destroyed by pockets of flammable methane gas known to exist in large quantities under the sea — maybe lightning or an electric spark ignited a huge bubble of methyl hydride that came to the surface right next to a send or plane, causing them to sink without a trace. In that location are a few obvious logical problems with this theory, including that methane exists naturally around the world and such an incident has never been known to happen. [Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle]

This satellite image of the large disturbance centered east of Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean. (Image credit: National Environmental Satellite, Data and Data Service (NESDIS).)

Others propose sudden rogue tidal waves. Or maybe some mysterious geomagnetic bibelot that creates navigational problems confusing pilots and somehow causing them to plunge into the ocean; and so again, pilots are trained to wing even with a loss of electronic navigation, and that theory doesn't explicate ship disappearances. In fact, the Navy has a web folio debunking this idea: "It has been inaccurately claimed that the Bermuda Triangle is one of the 2 places on world at which a magnetic compass points towards truthful due north. Commonly a compass will point toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known as compass variation. ... Although in the past this compass variation did affect the Bermuda Triangle region, due to fluctuations in the Earth'due south magnetic field this has evidently not been the case since the nineteenth century."

Mystery of the disappearing facts

But before nosotros accept whatsoever of these explanations, a good skeptic or scientist should enquire a more than basic question: Is there really whatsoever mystery to explain?

A announcer named Larry Kusche asked exactly that question, and came to a surprising reply: there is no mystery about strange disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. Kusche exhaustively re-examined the "mysterious disappearances" and found that the story was basically created past mistakes, mystery mongering, and in some cases outright fabrication — all existence passed forth as fact-checked truth.

In his definitive book "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery — Solved," Kusche notes that few writers on the topic bothered to do any real investigation — they mostly collected and repeated other, earlier writers who did the same. Unfortunately, Charles Berlitz'south facility with language did not carry over into credible research or scholarship. His books on the paranormal — and on the Bermuda Triangle, specifically — were riddled with errors, mistakes, and unscientific crank theories. In a mode, the Bermuda Triangle is largely a creation of Charles Berlitz'southward mistakes. Kusche would later on note that Berlitz's inquiry was so sloppy that "If Berlitz were to report that a boat were red, the take a chance of it being some other color is almost a certainty."

In some cases at that place's no record of the ships and planes claimed to take been lost in the aquatic triangular graveyard; they never existed outside of a writer's imagination. In other cases, the ships and planes were real enough — but Berlitz and others neglected to mention that they "mysteriously disappeared" during bad storms. Other times the vessels sank far outside the Bermuda Triangle.

It's likewise important to note that the area within the Bermuda Triangle is heavily traveled with prowl and cargo ships; logically, just by random take chances, more ships will sink at that place than in less-traveled areas such every bit the South Pacific.

Despite the fact that the Bermuda Triangle has been definitively debunked for decades, it still appears every bit an "unsolved mystery" in new books — mostly by authors more than interested in a sensational story than the facts. In the end, there's no need to invoke time portals, Atlantis, submerged UFO bases, geomagnetic anomalies, tidal waves, or anything else. The Bermuda Triangle mystery has a much simpler caption: sloppy research and sensational, mystery-mongering books.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science mag and writer of vi books, including "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries." His website is BenjaminRadford.com.

The Bermuda Triangle has fascinated many who lean toward believing imaginative stories and bizarre explanations, but skeptics take a whole other view of the expanse. Notice out whether you've got the facts straight.

Bermuda Triangle Quiz: Fact vs. Fiction

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Benjamin Radford is the Bad Scientific discipline columnist for Alive Science. He covers pseudoscience, psychology, urban legends and the scientific discipline behind "unexplained" or mysterious phenomenon. Ben has a primary's degree in education and a bachelor'due south degree in psychology. He is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer scientific discipline magazine and has written, edited or contributed to more than 20 books, including "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries," "Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Fauna in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore" and "Investigating Ghosts: The Scientific Search for Spirits," out in autumn 2017. His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.