March 18, 2010 • 19 mins
Stretching from Miami to Bermuda and Puerto Rico, the notorious Bermuda Triangle has a bad reputation for wrecking ships and planes. But how much of this legend is based on science? Tune in and learn more in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison that her Milk, the science editor at
how staff works dot com, and this is Robert Lamb,
science writer at how stuff works dot com. Today we
(00:23):
will be helpfully instructing you on how to get lost
in the Bermuda Triangle. Yeah. Have you ever been to
the Bermuda Triangle? I have traveled to it. Yeah, a
few years back. I was on my way from New
York City to San Juan, Puerto Rico for a fun weekend. Um,
and I didn't really think too much about it. I
was actually just so excited to be out of the
(00:45):
cold city for a weekend and sunny and warm Puerto
Rico that it didn't even cross my mind. So nothing happened.
I'm still here. I didn't get lost. What about you? Um?
I went on a Carnival Cruise Lines trip with my family. Yeah,
how was that it was? I remember eating a lot
of pizza off of the uh the Limitless Pizza Bar.
(01:06):
I remember playing a lot of Street Fighter versus X
men in the little arcade area. So did you go
to any midnight buffers? Yes? I did, and uh, and
actually it was kind of spooky and that I remember
after I left the cruise, I had gained like twenty pounds.
But you also did not disappear into the form me
(01:27):
to triangle. No, no, not only did I not disappear,
more of me came back than then went on the
set out. So yeah, we both survived. I lived to
tell the tale, which is uh not something that can
be said for everybody that's flown or sailed into these waters. Yeah.
So where are these waters again? Well, it's a triangle.
The northern point of the triangles Bermuda. The western point
(01:50):
is Miami, Florida, and the eastern point is San Juan,
Puerto Rico, and all the waters in between that super
me to triangle. Well, so where did the legend come
for and why do we think that ships and plans
are going to go missing in this area? Well? Uh,
the actual term Bermuda Triangle comes from nineteen sixty four
issue of our Ghosie magazine, which is just an American
(02:13):
pulp fiction magazine. But they had this article making the
case that something weird was going on here because over
the past century they're saying, like, you know, a hundred
ships and planes have disappeared. Maybe a thousand lives have
been lost. So a fiction magazine is making the case, right, Yeah,
that's where that's what kicked it all off. Yeah. And
it also has other names like the Devil's Triangle if
(02:33):
you know, if you want to make it sound extra creepy.
And some of these instances are are are pretty fascinating. Um.
Like there's the U. S. S cyclops um uh set
out set out from Brazil in the early nineteen hundreds. Um.
And then it had one stop off in Barbados before
disappearing just forever. Three six passengers and crew vanished without
(02:56):
a trace yep. Uh. Then the night this is the
big one. This is yeah, this is flight nineteen. You
have five U. S. Navy t BF avengers got kind
of lost and turned around and then uh uh they
talked to him on the radar, trying to forget where
they were. You know what, what's this island they're flying over?
And then they've never heard from him again. They sent
(03:19):
out two planes to try and find them. One of
those blew up in the air, and ever since, we
we keep finding avenger wreckage out in the ocean. Um
and it's never one of these five Avengers. It's always
uh you know, like at one point they found five
different wrecks and people are like, all right, this is it,
and then the Navy I chimed in and said, no,
(03:40):
that's just five different Avengers from five different situations. Uh So,
so remind me never to fly an avenger airplane. Probably
not a big risk, but yeah, never fly one. So
if you think about examples like that, I mean, it's
easy to see why the Ramina Triangle gets such a creepy,
mysterious reputation. But he turned to the many, like the U. S.
(04:00):
Coast Guard, and they're saying, no, no, no, the area
doesn't have an unusual number of incidents. Yeah, because this
is a especially compared to other areas that are also
highly highly trafficked, right, I mean, do you have a
lot of ships, a lot of planes going through uh
through these waters and why are they going to be
going through Well, you know, it's it's a pretty popular
destination spots like Puerto Rico. Somebody wants to jet off
(04:21):
for a sunny weekend. Yeah, it's been a popular trade
trade route over time. But then I think some people
are going to point out that that the that maybe
the Coast Guard just doesn't want to acknowledge, say the
existence of Atlantis or the presence of UFO activity, no doubt,
no doubt. So, um, yeah, there are a lot of
reasons the people site for all these disappearances, and a
(04:43):
lot of them are pretty pretty out there. So we're
not going to really dwell on the sunken city of
Atlantis and it's space crystals that are drawing ships down
to their icy depths, and we're not really going to
get into the UFO abductions, et cetera. But we are
going to talk of out some of the pretty solid
scientific theories that may be contributing to, uh to some
(05:06):
of these losses, and then some of the quasi scientific
theories that might be coming into play. Um, so why
don't you kick it off tell us about hurricanes and
crazy weather. Yeah, that's the big thing to keep in
mind is that this is an area of the world
that's subject of violent and unexpected storms. All Right, one second,
you've got you've got some you know, clear open open sea,
(05:29):
and then dam suddenly you've got maybe water spouts which
are um basically u sea tornadoes. You know, big columns
of violent water. Um. And you know those can can
take out a boat. They can also take out a plane. Um.
Or maybe or maybe suddenly there's a hundred foot high
rogue wave generated by a sea floor earthquake. Alright, Um.
(05:50):
The thing is that stuff in spring up really quickly. Uh,
and then and then it's gone before it can actually
even really pop up on radar. Right. Well, there's a
lot of speedy activity going on in there. We which
leads us to our next factor in that, which is
the Gulf Stream. And you guys know the Gulf Stream
as the very strong oceanic boundary current that starts up
in the Gulf of Mexico, heads north along the coast
(06:12):
of North America, the eastern coast of North America, and
then shoots on over to western Europe. It's like a
river in the sea, right, Yeah, it is a river
in the sea, like you mentioned. And within that, within
the span of the current, um, that crazy weather is intensified.
But but the main thing about the current is that
it's it's moving fast right. So Um. The National Oceanic
(06:34):
Atmospheric Administration actually has some good stats on us, and
they're saying that it flows about three hundred times faster
than the Amazon. So that's pretty fast. And how fast
exactly about one to three knots um and then it
kind of trickles down and slows down as it moves north. Well,
what's the point of all the speed? But this the
point is is that if you, if you're gonna wrack,
if you're gonna you know, disappear in the ocean, this
(06:56):
would be a great place to do it, because bam,
all the evidence disappears pretty as thanks to that swiftness
of the current. The other thing to keep in mind
when you think about the Gulf Stream is that it's
flowing right over some pretty crazy oceanic topography, and some
of that topography is seriously seriously deep. We're talking about
like nineteen thout. So if you want to go missing,
(07:16):
this would be a great spot. Yeah, you're not just
going to be lost, I mean, if you're just gone,
if you if you if you're down at these debts,
I think this is a cool up point to uh
to bring up another interesting lost ship, and that's Sudden
nineteen sixty three SS Marine Sulfur Queen. Of course. Yeah, Now,
(07:37):
there are several factors playing into this one, disappearing. First
of all, I had a molten sulfur cargo, so it's
pretty volatile, and people tend to think that this ship
probably exploded, all right, um. And then uh uh, this
is pretty deep water, like you said, so all this
debris is going to sink and uh potentially get covered
up by sediment. Um, So there's not really gonna be
(07:59):
any evidence. And then the third thing, um, is that
they when they were looking for the ship, they did
find like bits of clothing, bits of life jacket, etcetera.
And they think sharks may have eaten any survivors. So
that's the other thing to keep in mind. These are
living waters. This is a like a vibrant and dangerous
ecosystem at times. You know, it's a competitive community, right,
(08:21):
so if there are survivors, there's a good chance they'll
be eaten. Um. And that actually flows right into the
next potential suspect in ship and Plaine destruction in the
Bermuda triangle, and that's methane gas hydrates Okay, which also
goes by the name of what I like, this one
happened was oceanic flashman. Don't believe that. I think you're
(08:43):
just making that up. But I'm not aspect keep going anyway.
So this revolves around some stuff that scientists at Cardiff
University discovered, and it's large concentrations of methane gas trapped
on the sea floor. And this is due to, like
I said, vibe an ecosystem. So you have a lot
of dying and decomposing sea organisms, right, and then you
(09:04):
have some bacteria feasting on this buffet down there, and
these bacteria are the flatuating uh parties here all right,
it's creating all this methane gas. Alright, it gets trapped
down there, It gets trapped in this methane ice which
acts like a cap. All right. So it's just concentrated
and um and volatile. Right, So something disturbs that um.
(09:28):
It can it can actually cause a lot of damn.
It can cause basically underwater landslides. That can that that
that has they believe in the past, results in tsunamis.
But it can also cause this uh, this bubble, this
big burp of methane gas to rise up from the
ocean floor. All right, and let's say you're in a
ship underneath that rising bubble. Well, they say that this
(09:51):
bubble will will actually make the water less dense, like
basically turn it to foam so that the ship can
actually float the more. And it's just gets swallowed up, right,
So then the ship is kind of lower than the
surrounding waters. Right, it just basically opens up like a
big foamy mouth and just swallows it whole. And then
(10:11):
there's a lot of sediment stirred up by this uh
taking place. So that would end up just covering up
any wreckage as well, possibly hiding the evidence all right. Um,
And of course if you're in a plane flying over
that sinking boat. Um, some people theorized that this rising
column of gas could actually end up setting the plane
on fire. Oh yeah, So how often does this happen? Um? Well,
(10:36):
there's a lot of it out there. They scientists belief
that this stuff occurs throughout the world. Uh, and in
the amounts we're talking about it, like trillions of cubic feet,
Like they're talking about using this as a potential energy source.
So there is a lot of it. Um. Now, when
you get into how often it occurs, um, like to
do it U S Geological Survey says that this is
(10:58):
definitely a possible occurrence that could definitely take out a
boat but they're less certain about it having occurred in
this region of the Bermuda Triangle in the last fifteen
thousand years. However, Um, there are myths in the Black
Sea about these things taking out ships or rigs, and
in tooth and a year two thousand of sunken fishing
(11:19):
trawler was found at the center of a huge gas
eruption site in the North Sea. You know, this has
reminded me a lot of that article, Um, but we
wrote on exploding links. Yes, yeah, it reminds me a
lot of that too. The idea that you have this, uh,
this volatile gas at the bottom of buried underneath all
this water and stuff gets disrupted just right, it rises
(11:40):
up and that's a lot of gas to come surging
back up to the surface. So where would you rate
this as a contributing factor. It seems kind of on
a if you scale. Yeah, it's like a very good theory,
but whether or not the scientists seem a little uncertain
about whether or not it's actually happening, or if it's happening.
I don't think it's happening enough to be a major
(12:01):
contributor to any ship or air blank disappearances in the
Bermuda Triangle. Though, Okay, well, I have one that may
have been a factor in the past, but it is
not a factor anymore, and that is magnetic abnormalities. Right,
So supposedly, if you travel through the Bermuda Triangle in
the nineteenth century, your compass would just go berserk, possessed spinning, spinning, spinning.
(12:23):
So magnetic abnormalities used to be a problem in the
Bermuda Triangle, but they're not anymore. And the idea behind
this is that you have something called magnetic north and
you have something called true north, and the difference between
the two is called magnetic declination. You guys probably don't
need to know this because nowadays your fancy navigational equipment
are gonna help you out and you really you don't
even need to know about it. But back in the
(12:45):
days of the nineteenth century, say, if your compass was
pointing toward true north as as opposed to magnetic north,
you're gonna get lost, right, you have a false compash
reading and yeah, and you're gonna wind up, of course,
and you're gonna be lost, and maybe you're gonna wind
up on somebody's Bermuda Triangle. List of disappeared chips. But
here's the thing, this is no longer a valid theory
because the Earth's magnetic field is always changing, right, so
(13:08):
modern chips are not getting lost due to this. Basically,
well not only that, but your compass isn't kind to
point towards you north anymore. In the bringing to triangles, say,
if you had to rely on some really old school equipment,
but if you were operating with one of these old
fashioned compasses, you might find yourself at the side of
a blue hole blue hole. When the heck is a
(13:29):
blue hole, Well, the blue hole is is very real. Um,
it's basically an underwater sinkhole, a vertical cave just sending down, um,
into into the earth. Um. If you do like just
a Google search on this, you'll find some really stunning
images because you'll have just like crystal clear kind of
blue light blue waters, you know, beautiful Caribbean setting. And
(13:53):
then they'll be the circle of just dark you know,
dark blue because there's this pit just just sending down, uh,
you know for um, you know, hundreds and hundreds of feet.
I believe the Yeah, the deepest one in the world
is Dean's blue Hole. Dean Dean's Blue Yeah, you think
it would. They have some other name for it, like
you know, like the Blue Pit or you know something,
(14:14):
but it's six sixty three feet deep. Um And then
there's a really cool one on the black the Black
Hole of South Andros. And this was actually on land
like this little island area. But the theory here not
and this is this is where we leave the factual
and get more into the fanciful. But some Bermuda Triangle
(14:34):
junkies theorized that these uh, these blue holes are caused
by micro wormholes. Yeah, so you know, I guess the
ideas that you're flying or you're sailing along and then
you're stuck into a micro wormhole and you show up,
you know, in the past or another dimension or on
an episode of the Twilight Zone. Who knows, um u
instant instant. Incidentally, the Black Hole of South Andros actually
(14:57):
is a kind of of a wormhole into the past
because they say that the oxygen oxygen free water there
has similar properties to water found in the oceans three
point five billion years ago. There's like toxic bacteria down there.
It's you know, extreme aphiles living in this really kind
of an alien environment. So it's like a water artifact
(15:18):
from an ancient time. That's pretty neat that the ocean
is full of amazing things, just probably not the city
of Atlantis. Well, it may not be as exciting as
blue holes, but there is definitely one contributing factor that
we haven't talked about yet or too. But they're both
on the people's side and human error and pirates. Let's stry.
Let's tackle the human error first. So the idea here
(15:38):
is if you have a lot of people passing through
an area, eventually you're gonna have an accident. So basically,
the numbers are on your side here. If you get
if you have enough humans going through an area like
for me to Triangle or any other area, one of
them is going to have an accident. One of them
is going to have an off day. One of them
is going to be what were those pilots doing who
wound up going two hours past their destination playing video games?
(16:00):
Do you remember the North Coast Airline? I missed this one. Well, anyway,
you get a pilot who has an off day and
you're going to have an accident. So I mean the
theory here is human erran that's an off day when
you're playing video games when you should be piloting the airplane.
I don't know what they were doing. I cannot actually
say that they were still. Yeah, people people screw up.
People can be kind of stupid, and there's a lot
(16:21):
of people traveling through this area, so some of them
are going to screw up, and any of things like pirates.
And I know we think of most modern pirates hanging
out stay over in the waters off Somalia or maybe
an Indonesia or something like that. But if I were
a pirate and I'm not, why not head on over
to the Breminia Triangle because then you can say, well, hey,
(16:43):
it was the mysterious for me to triangle that you know,
objected the ship and plundered all the contents. So well,
let's get to let's get to the question here. How
do you get lost in the Bermuda Triangle? Like, if
you you really wanted to set out and insure that
you got lost, and if you're listening to this, you know,
and you do decide to get lost, do tell us
(17:03):
what happens, you know, shoot us an email. Um, But
but what would you need to do? I think the
first thing would be make sure that you're you're you're
carrying some sort of volatile cargo, preferably volatile valuable cargo,
so that it'll either wind up stolen or exploding. Right.
Make sure that you have a pilot who's maybe you
(17:24):
know a little hungover or something, or you know a
captain who's just kind of, you know, thinking about personal
troubles or something. Somebody who's who's really just not kind
of having his mind on the job. Yeah, try dragging
an anchor something. Try and stir up some methane hydrates. Yeah. Yeah,
make sure you're passing straight through the Gulf stream, right. Yeah.
(17:45):
In fact, do some loops through the Gulf stream. Look
for extreme weather. Yes, yeah, try and go during hurricanes
this season, and you know, hang out around some blue
holes just in case that wormhole thing pans out. Yeah,
and we think maybe maybe you might be able to
get lost and through me to try and go that way.
Go for it. Yeah, And if you like to say,
if you get lost, shoot us an email tell us
what happens. So if you wind up lost in the
(18:06):
Bermena Triangle but you have computer access, send us an
email to side stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Oh and while you're in the computer in the Bermuda Triangle.
Check out some us some good articles we have. You know,
I found one about that Christian Conger wrote about the
Bermena Triangle, only it's in the Alaskan Wilderness. It's called
why has part of the Alaskan Wilderness been called the
(18:27):
Bermuda Triangle? So you gotta read it to find out? Uh?
And also come come take a look around the blog
the blogs dot how suff works dot com, where you
can read about everything from girls with guns to tequila diamonds.
Thanks for listening. For more on this and thousands of
(18:48):
other topics, is that how stuff works dot com. Want
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
house stuff works dot com home page.
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison that her Milk, the science editor at
how staff works dot com, and this is Robert Lamb,
science writer at how stuff works dot com. Today we
(00:23):
will be helpfully instructing you on how to get lost
in the Bermuda Triangle. Yeah. Have you ever been to
the Bermuda Triangle? I have traveled to it. Yeah, a
few years back. I was on my way from New
York City to San Juan, Puerto Rico for a fun weekend. Um,
and I didn't really think too much about it. I
was actually just so excited to be out of the
(00:45):
cold city for a weekend and sunny and warm Puerto
Rico that it didn't even cross my mind. So nothing happened.
I'm still here. I didn't get lost. What about you? Um?
I went on a Carnival Cruise Lines trip with my family. Yeah,
how was that it was? I remember eating a lot
of pizza off of the uh the Limitless Pizza Bar.
(01:06):
I remember playing a lot of Street Fighter versus X
men in the little arcade area. So did you go
to any midnight buffers? Yes? I did, and uh, and
actually it was kind of spooky and that I remember
after I left the cruise, I had gained like twenty pounds.
But you also did not disappear into the form me
(01:27):
to triangle. No, no, not only did I not disappear,
more of me came back than then went on the
set out. So yeah, we both survived. I lived to
tell the tale, which is uh not something that can
be said for everybody that's flown or sailed into these waters. Yeah.
So where are these waters again? Well, it's a triangle.
The northern point of the triangles Bermuda. The western point
(01:50):
is Miami, Florida, and the eastern point is San Juan,
Puerto Rico, and all the waters in between that super
me to triangle. Well, so where did the legend come
for and why do we think that ships and plans
are going to go missing in this area? Well? Uh,
the actual term Bermuda Triangle comes from nineteen sixty four
issue of our Ghosie magazine, which is just an American
(02:13):
pulp fiction magazine. But they had this article making the
case that something weird was going on here because over
the past century they're saying, like, you know, a hundred
ships and planes have disappeared. Maybe a thousand lives have
been lost. So a fiction magazine is making the case, right, Yeah,
that's where that's what kicked it all off. Yeah. And
it also has other names like the Devil's Triangle if
(02:33):
you know, if you want to make it sound extra creepy.
And some of these instances are are are pretty fascinating. Um.
Like there's the U. S. S cyclops um uh set
out set out from Brazil in the early nineteen hundreds. Um.
And then it had one stop off in Barbados before
disappearing just forever. Three six passengers and crew vanished without
(02:56):
a trace yep. Uh. Then the night this is the
big one. This is yeah, this is flight nineteen. You
have five U. S. Navy t BF avengers got kind
of lost and turned around and then uh uh they
talked to him on the radar, trying to forget where
they were. You know what, what's this island they're flying over?
And then they've never heard from him again. They sent
(03:19):
out two planes to try and find them. One of
those blew up in the air, and ever since, we
we keep finding avenger wreckage out in the ocean. Um
and it's never one of these five Avengers. It's always
uh you know, like at one point they found five
different wrecks and people are like, all right, this is it,
and then the Navy I chimed in and said, no,
(03:40):
that's just five different Avengers from five different situations. Uh So,
so remind me never to fly an avenger airplane. Probably
not a big risk, but yeah, never fly one. So
if you think about examples like that, I mean, it's
easy to see why the Ramina Triangle gets such a creepy,
mysterious reputation. But he turned to the many, like the U. S.
(04:00):
Coast Guard, and they're saying, no, no, no, the area
doesn't have an unusual number of incidents. Yeah, because this
is a especially compared to other areas that are also
highly highly trafficked, right, I mean, do you have a
lot of ships, a lot of planes going through uh
through these waters and why are they going to be
going through Well, you know, it's it's a pretty popular
destination spots like Puerto Rico. Somebody wants to jet off
(04:21):
for a sunny weekend. Yeah, it's been a popular trade
trade route over time. But then I think some people
are going to point out that that the that maybe
the Coast Guard just doesn't want to acknowledge, say the
existence of Atlantis or the presence of UFO activity, no doubt,
no doubt. So, um, yeah, there are a lot of
reasons the people site for all these disappearances, and a
(04:43):
lot of them are pretty pretty out there. So we're
not going to really dwell on the sunken city of
Atlantis and it's space crystals that are drawing ships down
to their icy depths, and we're not really going to
get into the UFO abductions, et cetera. But we are
going to talk of out some of the pretty solid
scientific theories that may be contributing to, uh to some
(05:06):
of these losses, and then some of the quasi scientific
theories that might be coming into play. Um, so why
don't you kick it off tell us about hurricanes and
crazy weather. Yeah, that's the big thing to keep in
mind is that this is an area of the world
that's subject of violent and unexpected storms. All Right, one second,
you've got you've got some you know, clear open open sea,
(05:29):
and then dam suddenly you've got maybe water spouts which
are um basically u sea tornadoes. You know, big columns
of violent water. Um. And you know those can can
take out a boat. They can also take out a plane. Um.
Or maybe or maybe suddenly there's a hundred foot high
rogue wave generated by a sea floor earthquake. Alright, Um.
(05:50):
The thing is that stuff in spring up really quickly. Uh,
and then and then it's gone before it can actually
even really pop up on radar. Right. Well, there's a
lot of speedy activity going on in there. We which
leads us to our next factor in that, which is
the Gulf Stream. And you guys know the Gulf Stream
as the very strong oceanic boundary current that starts up
in the Gulf of Mexico, heads north along the coast
(06:12):
of North America, the eastern coast of North America, and
then shoots on over to western Europe. It's like a
river in the sea, right, Yeah, it is a river
in the sea, like you mentioned. And within that, within
the span of the current, um, that crazy weather is intensified.
But but the main thing about the current is that
it's it's moving fast right. So Um. The National Oceanic
(06:34):
Atmospheric Administration actually has some good stats on us, and
they're saying that it flows about three hundred times faster
than the Amazon. So that's pretty fast. And how fast
exactly about one to three knots um and then it
kind of trickles down and slows down as it moves north. Well,
what's the point of all the speed? But this the
point is is that if you, if you're gonna wrack,
if you're gonna you know, disappear in the ocean, this
(06:56):
would be a great place to do it, because bam,
all the evidence disappears pretty as thanks to that swiftness
of the current. The other thing to keep in mind
when you think about the Gulf Stream is that it's
flowing right over some pretty crazy oceanic topography, and some
of that topography is seriously seriously deep. We're talking about
like nineteen thout. So if you want to go missing,
(07:16):
this would be a great spot. Yeah, you're not just
going to be lost, I mean, if you're just gone,
if you if you if you're down at these debts,
I think this is a cool up point to uh
to bring up another interesting lost ship, and that's Sudden
nineteen sixty three SS Marine Sulfur Queen. Of course. Yeah, Now,
(07:37):
there are several factors playing into this one, disappearing. First
of all, I had a molten sulfur cargo, so it's
pretty volatile, and people tend to think that this ship
probably exploded, all right, um. And then uh uh, this
is pretty deep water, like you said, so all this
debris is going to sink and uh potentially get covered
up by sediment. Um, So there's not really gonna be
(07:59):
any evidence. And then the third thing, um, is that
they when they were looking for the ship, they did
find like bits of clothing, bits of life jacket, etcetera.
And they think sharks may have eaten any survivors. So
that's the other thing to keep in mind. These are
living waters. This is a like a vibrant and dangerous
ecosystem at times. You know, it's a competitive community, right,
(08:21):
so if there are survivors, there's a good chance they'll
be eaten. Um. And that actually flows right into the
next potential suspect in ship and Plaine destruction in the
Bermuda triangle, and that's methane gas hydrates Okay, which also
goes by the name of what I like, this one
happened was oceanic flashman. Don't believe that. I think you're
(08:43):
just making that up. But I'm not aspect keep going anyway.
So this revolves around some stuff that scientists at Cardiff
University discovered, and it's large concentrations of methane gas trapped
on the sea floor. And this is due to, like
I said, vibe an ecosystem. So you have a lot
of dying and decomposing sea organisms, right, and then you
(09:04):
have some bacteria feasting on this buffet down there, and
these bacteria are the flatuating uh parties here all right,
it's creating all this methane gas. Alright, it gets trapped
down there, It gets trapped in this methane ice which
acts like a cap. All right. So it's just concentrated
and um and volatile. Right, So something disturbs that um.
(09:28):
It can it can actually cause a lot of damn.
It can cause basically underwater landslides. That can that that
that has they believe in the past, results in tsunamis.
But it can also cause this uh, this bubble, this
big burp of methane gas to rise up from the
ocean floor. All right, and let's say you're in a
ship underneath that rising bubble. Well, they say that this
(09:51):
bubble will will actually make the water less dense, like
basically turn it to foam so that the ship can
actually float the more. And it's just gets swallowed up, right,
So then the ship is kind of lower than the
surrounding waters. Right, it just basically opens up like a
big foamy mouth and just swallows it whole. And then
(10:11):
there's a lot of sediment stirred up by this uh
taking place. So that would end up just covering up
any wreckage as well, possibly hiding the evidence all right. Um,
And of course if you're in a plane flying over
that sinking boat. Um, some people theorized that this rising
column of gas could actually end up setting the plane
on fire. Oh yeah, So how often does this happen? Um? Well,
(10:36):
there's a lot of it out there. They scientists belief
that this stuff occurs throughout the world. Uh, and in
the amounts we're talking about it, like trillions of cubic feet,
Like they're talking about using this as a potential energy source.
So there is a lot of it. Um. Now, when
you get into how often it occurs, um, like to
do it U S Geological Survey says that this is
(10:58):
definitely a possible occurrence that could definitely take out a
boat but they're less certain about it having occurred in
this region of the Bermuda Triangle in the last fifteen
thousand years. However, Um, there are myths in the Black
Sea about these things taking out ships or rigs, and
in tooth and a year two thousand of sunken fishing
(11:19):
trawler was found at the center of a huge gas
eruption site in the North Sea. You know, this has
reminded me a lot of that article, Um, but we
wrote on exploding links. Yes, yeah, it reminds me a
lot of that too. The idea that you have this, uh,
this volatile gas at the bottom of buried underneath all
this water and stuff gets disrupted just right, it rises
(11:40):
up and that's a lot of gas to come surging
back up to the surface. So where would you rate
this as a contributing factor. It seems kind of on
a if you scale. Yeah, it's like a very good theory,
but whether or not the scientists seem a little uncertain
about whether or not it's actually happening, or if it's happening.
I don't think it's happening enough to be a major
(12:01):
contributor to any ship or air blank disappearances in the
Bermuda Triangle. Though, Okay, well, I have one that may
have been a factor in the past, but it is
not a factor anymore, and that is magnetic abnormalities. Right,
So supposedly, if you travel through the Bermuda Triangle in
the nineteenth century, your compass would just go berserk, possessed spinning, spinning, spinning.
(12:23):
So magnetic abnormalities used to be a problem in the
Bermuda Triangle, but they're not anymore. And the idea behind
this is that you have something called magnetic north and
you have something called true north, and the difference between
the two is called magnetic declination. You guys probably don't
need to know this because nowadays your fancy navigational equipment
are gonna help you out and you really you don't
even need to know about it. But back in the
(12:45):
days of the nineteenth century, say, if your compass was
pointing toward true north as as opposed to magnetic north,
you're gonna get lost, right, you have a false compash
reading and yeah, and you're gonna wind up, of course,
and you're gonna be lost, and maybe you're gonna wind
up on somebody's Bermuda Triangle. List of disappeared chips. But
here's the thing, this is no longer a valid theory
because the Earth's magnetic field is always changing, right, so
(13:08):
modern chips are not getting lost due to this. Basically,
well not only that, but your compass isn't kind to
point towards you north anymore. In the bringing to triangles, say,
if you had to rely on some really old school equipment,
but if you were operating with one of these old
fashioned compasses, you might find yourself at the side of
a blue hole blue hole. When the heck is a
(13:29):
blue hole, Well, the blue hole is is very real. Um,
it's basically an underwater sinkhole, a vertical cave just sending down, um,
into into the earth. Um. If you do like just
a Google search on this, you'll find some really stunning
images because you'll have just like crystal clear kind of
blue light blue waters, you know, beautiful Caribbean setting. And
(13:53):
then they'll be the circle of just dark you know,
dark blue because there's this pit just just sending down, uh,
you know for um, you know, hundreds and hundreds of feet.
I believe the Yeah, the deepest one in the world
is Dean's blue Hole. Dean Dean's Blue Yeah, you think
it would. They have some other name for it, like
you know, like the Blue Pit or you know something,
(14:14):
but it's six sixty three feet deep. Um And then
there's a really cool one on the black the Black
Hole of South Andros. And this was actually on land
like this little island area. But the theory here not
and this is this is where we leave the factual
and get more into the fanciful. But some Bermuda Triangle
(14:34):
junkies theorized that these uh, these blue holes are caused
by micro wormholes. Yeah, so you know, I guess the
ideas that you're flying or you're sailing along and then
you're stuck into a micro wormhole and you show up,
you know, in the past or another dimension or on
an episode of the Twilight Zone. Who knows, um u
instant instant. Incidentally, the Black Hole of South Andros actually
(14:57):
is a kind of of a wormhole into the past
because they say that the oxygen oxygen free water there
has similar properties to water found in the oceans three
point five billion years ago. There's like toxic bacteria down there.
It's you know, extreme aphiles living in this really kind
of an alien environment. So it's like a water artifact
(15:18):
from an ancient time. That's pretty neat that the ocean
is full of amazing things, just probably not the city
of Atlantis. Well, it may not be as exciting as
blue holes, but there is definitely one contributing factor that
we haven't talked about yet or too. But they're both
on the people's side and human error and pirates. Let's stry.
Let's tackle the human error first. So the idea here
(15:38):
is if you have a lot of people passing through
an area, eventually you're gonna have an accident. So basically,
the numbers are on your side here. If you get
if you have enough humans going through an area like
for me to Triangle or any other area, one of
them is going to have an accident. One of them
is going to have an off day. One of them
is going to be what were those pilots doing who
wound up going two hours past their destination playing video games?
(16:00):
Do you remember the North Coast Airline? I missed this one. Well, anyway,
you get a pilot who has an off day and
you're going to have an accident. So I mean the
theory here is human erran that's an off day when
you're playing video games when you should be piloting the airplane.
I don't know what they were doing. I cannot actually
say that they were still. Yeah, people people screw up.
People can be kind of stupid, and there's a lot
(16:21):
of people traveling through this area, so some of them
are going to screw up, and any of things like pirates.
And I know we think of most modern pirates hanging
out stay over in the waters off Somalia or maybe
an Indonesia or something like that. But if I were
a pirate and I'm not, why not head on over
to the Breminia Triangle because then you can say, well, hey,
(16:43):
it was the mysterious for me to triangle that you know,
objected the ship and plundered all the contents. So well,
let's get to let's get to the question here. How
do you get lost in the Bermuda Triangle? Like, if
you you really wanted to set out and insure that
you got lost, and if you're listening to this, you know,
and you do decide to get lost, do tell us
(17:03):
what happens, you know, shoot us an email. Um, But
but what would you need to do? I think the
first thing would be make sure that you're you're you're
carrying some sort of volatile cargo, preferably volatile valuable cargo,
so that it'll either wind up stolen or exploding. Right.
Make sure that you have a pilot who's maybe you
(17:24):
know a little hungover or something, or you know a
captain who's just kind of, you know, thinking about personal
troubles or something. Somebody who's who's really just not kind
of having his mind on the job. Yeah, try dragging
an anchor something. Try and stir up some methane hydrates. Yeah. Yeah,
make sure you're passing straight through the Gulf stream, right. Yeah.
(17:45):
In fact, do some loops through the Gulf stream. Look
for extreme weather. Yes, yeah, try and go during hurricanes
this season, and you know, hang out around some blue
holes just in case that wormhole thing pans out. Yeah,
and we think maybe maybe you might be able to
get lost and through me to try and go that way.
Go for it. Yeah, And if you like to say,
if you get lost, shoot us an email tell us
what happens. So if you wind up lost in the
(18:06):
Bermena Triangle but you have computer access, send us an
email to side stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Oh and while you're in the computer in the Bermuda Triangle.
Check out some us some good articles we have. You know,
I found one about that Christian Conger wrote about the
Bermena Triangle, only it's in the Alaskan Wilderness. It's called
why has part of the Alaskan Wilderness been called the
(18:27):
Bermuda Triangle? So you gotta read it to find out? Uh?
And also come come take a look around the blog
the blogs dot how suff works dot com, where you
can read about everything from girls with guns to tequila diamonds.
Thanks for listening. For more on this and thousands of
(18:48):
other topics, is that how stuff works dot com. Want
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
house stuff works dot com home page.
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