Scientists Claim To Have Solved the Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle (vice.com)

Slashdot reader MyrddinBach shares a report that claims the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle has been solved. The Bermuda Triangle is a loosely-defined region of water between the southernmost tip of Florida, Puerto Rico, and the island of Bermuda to the north. British oceanographers now believe that "rogue waves" are responsible for the disappearance of a number of ships in the region. VICE News reports: So what are rogue waves? Basically, they're abnormally large and unexpected waves in open sea. Dr Simon Boxall, an Oceanographer from the University of Southampton who led the new study, explained on a Channel 5 documentary The Bermuda Triangle Enigma: "there are storms to the South and North, which come together... we've measured waves in excess of 30 meters. The bigger the boat gets, the more damage is done." His team re-created the intense surges of the 30 meter waves by using indoor simulators. Then to see what such a wave would do to a large ship, they built a model of the USS Cyclops, a carrier that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle in 1918 and claimed the lives of 309 people.

Comments

Not a mystery

[phantomfive]

If they were scientists, they would have done basic research. At least do a statistical analysis explaining that these waves are more likely to happen near Bermuda. Even looking at Wikipedia we see:

"The number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the ocean."

and

"In a 2013 study, the World Wide Fund for Nature identified the world's 10 most dangerous waters for shipping, but the Bermuda Triangle was not among them."

Instead this looks like an advertisement for Channel 5's latest TV show. I won't be watching it.

Re:Not a mystery

[blindseer]

They did do their research, only they left that part to the last paragraph of the article.

Also, he noted that the Bermuda Triangle, which is one of the most heavily trafficked parts of any ocean, doesn't actually see a statistically unlikely rate of disappearances. âoeAccording to Lloyds of London and the US coast guard, the number of planes that go missing in the Bermuda Triangle is the same as anywhere in the world on a percentage basis,â Dr Karl told News.com.

I remember seeing this in some TV show about the Bermuda Triangle. They talked about "killer waves" and "methane clouds" that would destroy ships and kill the engines in airplanes. But then at the end of the program they talked about how these phenomenon are not unique to the area, which "sunk" the entire idea of this being a particularly dangerous part of the sea.

I thought the methane clouds idea was very interesting. What would happen is a "burp" of methane from deep in the ocean could come up randomly in front of an airplane. The cause of the "burp" would likely be a seismic shift in the ocean floor which would release some pressure on a "sludge" of liquefied methane on the ocean floor, from decayed plants or what had seeped up from the earth and liquefied by the pressure, and turn it to a gas bubble. This bubble would get very large as it rose and when it popped up to the surface it would create this cloud of water and methane that could deprive oxygen to an airplane engine. Someone flying low and slow, which often happens in recreational and military airplanes, could mean being left with little time to react before hitting the water. Having multiple engines in this case wouldn't help because all engines would be deprived of oxygen at the same time. For this to happen though would be a very tiny chance of someone flying low to the sea, the bubble happen right in front of them, and be sufficiently large to kill all the engines. The chances are small but given enough time it could happen.

Rogue waves.

[keithdowsett]

Rogue waves are more interesting than the original article.

In deep water rogue waves fall into two categories. There are areas in the ocean where two currents meet, for example along the east coast of Southern Africa. This can result in increased incidence of rogue waves in those areas. These are quite well known to mariners. But the others are what are sometimes called "Schrodinger waves".

Historically, mathematicians have treated ocean as classical waves with a normal distribution of wave heights because that was a very good match to what was observed. But when you apply the Schrodinger wave equation it predicts a low probability of extremely large waves which appear from nowhere and vanish equally quickly. The probability of these events is extremely small, but there are a large number of ships spending very long times on the open ocean. Consequently, there will be a small number of ships which encounter waves many times larger than the average wave height and sink without warning.

The final class of rogue wave is a 'soliton' wave. These have been generated by ships travelling at a high speed in moderate depths (30-40m) of water. The wave picks up energy from the wake but is almost invisible in deep water. Because it is a soliton the wave packet continues to propagate with little loss of energy instead of dissipating quickly like a normal wake. If the wave hits a beach, a rogue wave appears and sweep sunbathers into the sea.

Much more mathematically interesting than you might think.

Re:Of course

[Dogtanian]

Came here to say this. The mystery was "solved" years ago when it was proven that it didn't exist in the first place.

I appreciate that it doesn't benefit the makers of what I'm assuming is going to be a cheesy, "Ancient Aliens" level documentary made for bloody Channel 5 for this to be the case, but I'd at least expect better from Slashdot than to waste time promoting this fluff.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

they built a model of the USS Cyclops, a carrier that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle

Actually it was a collier, a coal transport cargo ship - there weren't very many carriers around during the Great War.

Not that I've any time for this 'documentary', but I can see why someone called her a carrier here. Whoever wrote this spiel was being (nautically ignorant) pedantic, as her cargo was manganese ore at the time she was lost, technically she was acting as an bulk ore carrier, a 'bulker', I know when people use 'carrier' they tend to mean a 'flat top', but you can see the way the contraction developed in this case.

'Collier' does sort of imply that coal is the cargo, but yes, the Cyclops was built as a collier, though one of her sister ships did eventually get to be the US's first flat top, the USS Langley.

Re:Of course

[MightyYar]

Not only was it a coal transport, but it was one based on a design that had several known failures. Two sister ships went missing near Europe while carrying heavy loads. Another similar ship was observed to sink in calm seas, and erosion of structural members was observed in other similar ships carrying corrosive loads. Finally, it was overloaded with Brazilian manganese when it disappeared.

I don't think there is much of a mystery here, rogue wave or not.

Re: Of course

[cayenne8]

Ok, maybe this explains ships disappearing in the triangle.....

How do big waves explain the disappearance of aircraft??