Japan Probes Mysterious Vapor Eruption

Saeed al-Sahaf writes "From the BBC, Japan's Coast Guard dispatched aircraft Sunday to survey a 3,300-foot-high column of steam rising from the Pacific Ocean off the island of Iwo Jima. MSNBC has a nice picture. The vapor was reported Saturday after Japanese troops stationed on the small island observed the massive cloudy plume rise from the sea about 30 miles southeast of the island. 'It's highly likely that it's caused by an eruption of an underwater volcano,' Japanese officials said. But others are not so sure, and are speculating that Godzilla has awoken from its nap. Tokyo remains calm at this hour."

Comments

Steam

[ImaNihilist]

I hate Steam.

Re:I saw this one

[Mateorabi]

There is also a theory that evaporating/subliming methane deposits can also sink ships due to the aerated water not being dense enough.

There is also speculation that the Bermuda Triangle has lots of these unstable deposits. Would explain a few things.

Re:I saw this one

[crawling_chaos]

I suggest that you look for a copy of the sadly out of print The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: SOLVED. A librarian in Texas pulled things like the actual weather reports and did statistical analysis on the so-called Triangle and found a few key things:

• The "ghost ship" stories like the Marie Celeste are drunken sailor's tales. There is no record of such a ship even being built.
• Most of the "clear weather" disappearances, like the TBM Avengers, actually happened during foul weather. No reporters bothered to check the actual weather records.
• Quite a few "Bermuda Triangle" disappearances occurred well outside of the triangle, such that it needs to be redefined as pretty much the entire South Atlantic.
• And finally, when you factor out all of these circumstances, the unexplained loss rate is average for an area with that much shipping traffic.

I would furthermore add that since the advent of GPS and more reliable marine radio, we sure haven't heard much noise from the Graveyard of the Atlantic.