Our planet is full of mysteries. The fact that humanity knows today about the world in which we live is only a small fraction of that huge research material that has yet to be found for study. Along with the explainable natural and physical phenomena that we face from time to time, there are objects in the world, the essence of which does not yet have a scientific explanation. One of these white spots on the map of modern science is the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. This part of the world ocean is shrouded in so many secrets that more than one generation will be concerned about their solution.
What is the Bermuda Triangle?
The area with a high frequency of recorded anomalous events really has a triangle shape on the map. Its peaks are Bermuda, the Florida peninsula and the island of Puerto Rico. In the southern part of this area, inside the triangle, the Bahamas are located - a real paradise for tourists.
The Bermuda Triangle is not marked on any world map. This zone exists conditionally and has various names in the literature. "Devil's Sea" is one of these names, although it should be recognized that it is often applied to other areas of the oceans in which not less mysterious and mysterious phenomena occur. According to the media, survivors of shipwrecks and witnesses of anomalous accidents, the historically established zone of the Bermuda Triangle is the area of death of ships and the place of disappearance of aircraft - and this is a fairly extensive territory of the Atlantic. Data on all catastrophes are recorded in special maritime reference books, with a clear or approximate indication of the coordinates of the accident site.
The specific borders of the Bermuda Triangle are missing. Some believe that the Gulf of Mexico belongs to the mysterious region. Others expand the eastern part of the triangle to the Azores, increasing the area of the anomalous region to 2 million square meters. kilometers Science is rather restrained in its judgments about this part of the sea, while journalism and sensational lovers fuel the bleak reputation of the Bermuda Triangle based on real facts, as well as myths and legends. It is considered that the boundaries of the mysterious triangle conditionally pass along imaginary delineated lines. It was there, beyond the borders of this zone, that the places of the most strange shipwrecks were recorded, the repeated disappearances of the aircraft were marked.
The condition of the seabed in the zone delineated by the sides of the triangle has now been well studied. Bermuda is the summit of seamounts that rise above the vast Bermuda Plateau. The ocean shelf here is replaced by deep underwater plains. On a relatively small area of the sea day, various types of relief are concentrated: the shelf, continental slope and plains side by side with deep depressions. Despite the fact that the average depth of the Sargasso Sea (in the zone of the location of the Bermuda Triangle) is 5,000-6,000 meters, there are also often significant differences in depths. The coral shoals of the continental shelf are replaced by deep depressions and crevices. From north to south, depths are lowered, ending in the Puerto Rico deep-sea chute, with a maximum depth of 8,742 meters.
Recently, in the course of geophysical studies, deep-sea drilling of the shelf was carried out, which provided information about what is located under the ocean floor.
Nature explains the mysteries of the triangle
Climatic, geophysical and hydrographic data suggest that this area of the world ocean is somewhat different from other areas of the hydrosphere. To assert that the area bounded by the sides of the triangle is anomalous will, on the whole, be incorrect. There are a number of natural factors that can provide a scientific explanation for the nature of the incidents glorifying this zone. The situation in the area of the Bermuda Triangle is influenced by the following factors:
- extremely unstable and complex meteorological conditions;
- complex hydrological regime of ocean waters;
- unstable geomagnetic environment;
- geophysical processes occurring at the bottom of the world ocean.
All other factors that are attributed to the role in creating the anomalous zone have a sci-fi nature, born due to the emotional outburst of people who are to some extent involved in disasters. Today, the disappearance of ships and aircraft in the Bermuda Triangle is a rare phenomenon.
Sea vessels are much more likely to sink in coastal waters, and air liners fall in completely different parts of our planet. This is evidenced by the data of official registers and news of the periodical press. Over the past 50 years, there is little information about any mysterious death of ships and aircraft in the area.
Weather phenomena, hydrological processes occurring here, look abnormal in comparison with the weather in the rest of the globe. The flow of the Gulf Stream, whose temperature is significantly higher than the waters of the Atlantic, significantly complicates the hydrological environment for navigation. One of the surprising factors is sea water, which changes its salinity depending on the season. This, in turn, leads to the phenomenon of the so-called "dead water". A ship caught in such a section of the ocean may lose its buoyancy and, as a result, fall into the abyss.
In this region, as in other parts of the world's oceans, there are frequent strong storms and often devastating hurricanes that are caused by the accumulation of warm air masses over the ocean. According to the meteorological reference book "Handbook of Meteorology" for 1977, up to 60 storm days a year were observed in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. This is quite a lot when compared with data from the neighboring regions of the Atlantic Ocean. Most often, stormy weather is present in the northern part of the triangle, in the region of Bermuda. Here the sea is restless every fourth day. It cannot be said that in the area of the Bermuda Triangle, storms of a universal scale often occur. Any storm, in which the excitement reaches 5-6 points, can be fatal for small and unprepared ships in technical terms.
The climate in this region of our planet is constantly monitored. Rare climatic phenomena are noted here, which to a great extent can explain why ships disappear in the Bermuda Triangle and where the aircraft go. The Bahamas often become an area of destructive winds. The frequency of hurricanes and typhoons swept through the area for all the years of meteorological observations, the Bermuda Triangle is among the leaders. This is facilitated by warm sea water, constantly blowing in the south-east of the trade winds, formed in the zone of calm. Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and the coast of Florida are constantly exposed to the elements. Hurricanes have tremendous destructive power, devastating and destroying everything in their path, so shipwreck and the disappearance of aircraft in the Bermuda Triangle under such climatic conditions is a common phenomenon.
Hurricanes sweep over the islands of the Caribbean once or twice a year. It is these days that account for the majority of shipwrecks and disappearances of aircraft.
Despite the fact that the Sargasso Sea and its region, called the Bermuda Triangle, is considered to be well studied, this region remains a favorite topic for scholars, as well as lovers of secrets and mysteries. The reason for the increased interest in this object is that it is truly complex in the meteorological and hydrological aspects. For the scientific community, the Bermuda Triangle has become the eldorado of scientific knowledge, and for lovers of science fiction and sensation, "The Devil's Sea" is a real treasure of hypotheses and theory, the birthplace of legends.
Mysterious disappearances
Science-fiction writers, journalists and psychics attribute this part of the Atlantic Ocean to the zone of paranormal phenomena to which our planet is generous. The disappearance of the ships was explained by the sudden attack of unknown monsters living in the depths of the sea, by the actions of aliens. Quite often blame for what happened lovers of sensation lay on the inhabitants of the legendary Atlantis. More sober hypotheses attribute the disappearance of people and the death of aircraft to anomalous phenomena occurring in the geomagnetic field of the Earth and in the thickness of sea water.
Here it will be appropriate to recall the theory of "black holes" in which sea-going vessels fail and planes fall. As in the case of space, there are temporary portals on Earth in which the laws of physics are violated and which are not affected by time. People who disappeared from the deck of the ships, the missing planes did not die, but were transported to another place in the Universe. However, this theory does not hold water when they begin to compare the facts, the testimony of witnesses and eyewitnesses. Nevertheless, in reports on sea catastrophes and aircraft crashes, it is often possible to find descriptions of phenomena that are quite rare for our planet and physical human conditions. As a rule, at this point were observed:
- sudden loss of orientation of people in space;
- failure of all navigation instruments and radio communications;
- sudden engine failures and loss of buoyancy of the vessel.
Among the anomalous phenomena can be noted the mysterious glow of the sea, preceding the wreck of a ship or aircraft. Often described are killer waves arising from nowhere in the open ocean. The mysterious background of the events was exacerbated by the disappearance of people from the shipboard. So it was, for example, with the brigantine "Maria Celeste", which in the fall of 1872 left New York to the shores of Portugal. The ship never arrived at its destination. Only a month later, the crew left the crew safe and sound in the Azores region. The results of the inspection of the ship suggested that the crew of the ship, together with its captain, had just left the ship. What were the reasons - we can only guess.
The story of the disappearance of people was continued in the case of the German merchant ship Freya, which was discovered near Bermuda without crew on board. However, the most mysterious events were noted at a later period. With the development of technical means, not only has the technical equipment of ships and aircraft improved. There was a technical ability to track the ship’s course, to record any changes occurring on board ships.
New Loss
Let us distract from the literary account of the events taking place in the area of the Bermuda Triangle, where more than a dozen ships and many aircraft have disappeared, and we turn to the dry statistics of marine shipwrecks and aircraft accidents. Relatively "fresh" facts of the death of ships often occur in the first half of the XX century. According to various sources, more than a thousand people disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle during this time - however, these data critics consider questionable. Nevertheless, it is still not easy to find a correct explanation for the death of large ships and the loss of quite modern aircraft that just disappeared without a trace in the sea.
All over the world, the loud echo was the death of the American cargo ship Cyclops, which was heading with a cargo of coal from Barbados to one of the US ports. The huge ship with a displacement of almost 20 thousand tons disappeared without a trace in the ocean, along with the entire crew. The route followed the vessel through the ill-fated triangle, so the loss of such a huge ship is attributed to the action of the Bermuda anomaly. The following fact, which has not yet received a clear explanation, was the disappearance in December 1945 of the link of the American torpedo bombers "Evenger". All five aircraft, equipped with navigation equipment and communications, are gone. Other aircraft were sent in search, one of which also disappeared without a trace off the coast of the Florida Peninsula.
All the listed catastrophes and many other accidents of ships and aircraft are entered in the register of Lioyd's insurance company. According to experts involved in the study of maritime accidents, all of these cases and emergency occur in the area of the Bermuda Triangle with the same regularity as in other parts of the world.
