Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle (also known as Devil's Triangle and Devil's
Sea) is a nearly half-million square-mile (1.2 million km2) area of
ocean roughly defined by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and the southernmost
tip of Florida. This area is noted for
a high incidence of unexplained losses of ships, small boats, and
aircraft..
The Bermuda Triangle has become popular through representation by
the mass media, in which it is a paranormal site in which the
known laws of physics are either violated, altered, or both.
While there is a common belief that a number of ships and
airplanes have disappeared under highly unusual circumstances in
this region, the United States Coast Guard and others disagree with
that assessment, citing statistics demonstrating that the number of
incidents involving lost ships and aircraft is no larger than that
of any other heavily traveled region of the world.
There is a common belief that a number of ships and airplanes
have disappeared under highly unusual circumstances in the region
called
Bermuda Triangle. Over 100 airplane disappearances and over
1000 lives lost since 1945
Many of the alleged mysteries have proven not so mysterious or
unusual upon close examination, with inaccuracies and misinformation
about the cases often circulating and recirculating over the
decades.
The triangle is an arbitrary shape, crudely marking out a
corridor of the Atlantic, stretching northward from the West Indies,
along the North American seaboard, as far as the Carolinas. In the
Age of Sail, ships returning to Europe from parts south would sail
north to the Carolinas, then turn east for Europe, taking advantage
of the prevailing wind direction across the North Atlantic. Even
with the development of steam and internal-combustion engines, a
great deal more shipping traffic was (and still is) found nearer the
US coastline than towards the empty centre of the Atlantic. The
Triangle also loosely conforms with the course of the Gulf Stream as
it leaves the West Indies, and has always been an area of volatile
weather. The combination of distinctly heavy maritime traffic and
tempestuous weather meant that a certain, also distinctly large,
number of vessels would flounder in storms.
Given the historical limitations of communications technology,
most of those ships that sank without survivors would disappear
without a trace. The advent of wireless communications, radar, and
satellite navigation meant that the unexplained disappearances
largely ceased at some point in the 20th Century. The occasional
vessel still sinks, but rarely without a trace. It should be noted
that both the concept and the name of the Bermuda Triangle date only
to the 1960s, and were the products of an American journalist.
Other areas often purported to possess unusual characteristics
are the Devil's Sea, located near Japan, and the Marysburgh Vortex
or the Great Lakes Triangle, located in eastern Lake Ontario.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Triangle
Bermuda (or "Devil's") Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle (a.k.a. the Devil's Triangle) is a
triangular area in the Atlantic Ocean bounded roughly at its points
by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Legend has it that many people,
ships and planes have mysteriously vanished in this area. How many
have mysteriously disappeared depends on who is doing the locating
and the counting. The size of the triangle varies from 500,000
square miles to three times that size, depending on the imagination
of the author. (Some include the Azores, the Gulf of Mexico, and the
West Indies in the "triangle.") Some trace the mystery back to the
time of Columbus. Even so, estimates range from about 200 to no more
than 1,000 incidents in the past 500 years. Howard Rosenberg claims
that in 1973 the U.S. Coast Guard answered more than 8,000 distress
calls in the area and that more than 50 ships and 20 planes have
gone down in the Bermuda Triangle within the last century.
Many theories have been given to explain the extraordinary
mystery of these missing ships and planes. Evil extraterrestrials,
residue crystals from Atlantis, evil humans with anti-gravity
devices or other weird technologies, and vile vortices from the
fourth dimension are favorites among fantasy writers. Strange
magnetic fields and oceanic flatulence (methane gas from the bottom
of the ocean) are favorites among the technically-minded. Weather
(thunderstorms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, high waves,
currents, etc.) bad luck, pirates, explosive cargoes, incompetent
navigators, and other natural and human causes are favorites among
skeptical investigators.
There are some skeptics who argue that the facts do not support
the legend, that there is no mystery to be solved, and nothing that
needs explaining.The number of wrecks in this area is not
extraordinary, given its size, location and the amount of traffic it
receives. Many of the ships and planes that have been identified as
having disappeared mysteriously in the Bermuda Triangle were not in
the Bermuda Triangle at all. Investigations to date have not
produced scientific evidence of any unusual phenomena involved in
the disappearances. Thus, any explanation, including so-called
scientific ones in terms of methane gas being released from the
ocean floor, magnetic disturbances, etc., are not needed. The real
mystery is how the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery at all.
The modern legend of the Bermuda Triangle began soon after five
Navy planes [Flight 19] vanished on a training mission during a
severe storm in 1945. The most logical theory as to why they
vanished is that lead pilot Lt. Charles Taylor’s compass failed. The
trainees' planes were not equipped with working navigational
instruments. The group was disoriented and simply, though
tragically, ran out of fuel. No mysterious forces were likely to
have been involved other than the mysterious force of gravity on
planes with no fuel. It is true that one of the rescue planes blew
up shortly after take-off, but this was likely due to a faulty gas
tank rather than to any mysterious forces.
Over the years there have been dozens of articles, books, and
television programs promoting the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.
In his study of this material, Larry Kushe found that few did any
investigation into the mystery. Rather, they passed on the
speculations of their predecessors as if they were passing on the
mantle of truth. Of the many uncritical accounts of the mystery of
the Bermuda Triangle, perhaps no one has done more to create this
myth than Charles Berlitz, who had a bestseller on the subject in
1974. After examining the 400+ page official report of the Navy
Board of Investigation of the disappearance of the Navy planes in
1945, Kushe found that the Board wasn't baffled at all by the
incident and did not mention alleged radio transmissions cited by
Berlitz in his book. According to Kushe, what isn't misinterpreted
by Berlitz is fabricated. Kushe writes: "If Berlitz were to report
that a boat were red, the chance of it being some other color is
almost a certainty." (Berlitz, by the way, did not invent the name;
that was done by Vincent Gaddis in "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle,"
which appeared in the February, 1964, issue of Argosy, a magazine
devoted to fiction.)
In short, the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery by
a kind of communal reinforcement among uncritical authors and a
willing mass media to uncritically pass on the speculation that
something mysterious is going on in the Atlantic.
Source:
http://skepdic.com/bermuda.html
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