Triangle of Darkness
The water of the Atlantic Ocean between Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda seems so nice and pleasing and relaxing. However, it is a deadly part of ocean blamed for many disappearances and is best known as the Bermuda Triangle. The Bermuda Triangle covers about 1.3 million square kilometers of the Atlantic Ocean. Over the centuries, ship and planes have disappeared and people have gone missing without a trace and no answer to why or how it happens. There are several theories behind the disappearances, but three stick out. The three theories are “explosive ice”, magnetic field, and aliens with time travel.
The Bermuda Triangle was first named when five U.S Navy aircraft went missing during a training flight in December of 1945. The official inquiry was that the aircrafts had just gotten lost and ran out of fuel and had to crash into the Atlantic Ocean (McWilliams 22). They kept that idea of plane trouble until many other aircraft crashed or were never found again in the same area that the five U.S Navy aircraft went missing. The theory of ‘explosive ice’ started after that. ‘Explosive ice’ are hydrates that are solid crystals that sometimes form when hydrogen gases are pushed into very high pressures under water on the ocean floor. McWilliams said, the “hydrates bubble” very easily if brought into contact with water that is 4 or 5 degrees. When these hydrates form the air is then too thin for an aircraft to get enough pull out of the engines to fly (22). It is believed that the aircrafts would then get put under the same force as the hydrates underwater and could never be found again. This theory doesn’t only apply to just the disappearance of airplanes. It also be to blame for the sinking of all of the ships that have gone missing also. Just like the hydrates making the air too thin, they also cause the water to become less dense affecting the buoyancy of ships. This made many people believe that the theory of ‘explosive ice’ was true. One night in November of 2000 a team of scientist, historians, discovered that the hydrates are composed of methane hydrates (Ebersole 10). The scientist then wanted to figure out what was forming the methane hydrates in the ocean. According to Ebersole, the methane is a colorless, odorless gas that forms beneath the floor of the ocean when dead sea animals decompose (10). In the North Sea there is a place with a sunken ship that scientist have been able to inspect with a submarine called the Witch Ground. It has the same levels of methane gas as the Bermuda Triangle. The scientists were able to see that the ship had no damage to the hull. With no damage to the hull the ship had not collided with anything and had sunk straight down without landing on the front end or the back end of the ship. Ebersole says, the only way this ship was sunk was either by rain, high waves, or the methane gas (10). Without any other damage to the ship this is the only theory that explained what caused it to sink. Yet, some scientists were not convinced. The theory of the magnetic field started when the American ship Ellen Austin was sailing through the Bermuda Triangle and saw an abandoned ship. The captain put a crew of people on the abandoned ship and told them to sail along side the Ellen Austin. The two ships were separated and the abandoned ship and crew were never heard from again (Ramsay 1). The finding and second disappearance of this abandoned ship caused scientist to come up with a theory that there is a magnetic field that is in the Bermuda triangle that can disrupt compasses and radio communication. That was not the first ship to be found abandoned either. In 1857 the ship named James B Chester was found without a crew either. This ship was empty as if people just jumped off of the boat to kill themselves. The ships dining room still had food on the tables and the chairs had all been kicked over. The magnetic field causes the compasses to read wrong causing ships and aircrafts