Slashdot Mirror
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.
that's what *they* want us to believe
"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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Things melt in the Bermuda Triangle. It's always exactly 180 degrees in the triangle.
rewriting history since 2109
There's nowhere in any of the linked articles that suggests they did that (it would be very cool if they had). Instead it seems they proved that a giant wave can sink a ship. Woohoo I'll bet Nature is wishing they got the submission on that remarkable paper.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This garbage article isn't news that matters.
The "rogue vawes" are gonna saw those boats in half. I bete the 309 people would still be alive if they had some Flex-Tape.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Just the mere mention of the new Space Force has scared off the rogue aliens and pirates.
The ship in question was overloaded, had only one functional engine out of two, and had two sister ships that both sank due to structural failure.
Ships and planes do not avoid the area. It is one of the most heavily trafficked stretches of ocean in the world, and statistically just as safe as any other. Most of the stories of mysterious disappearances are either greatly exaggerated or outright fabrications.
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.
Yeah, yeah.. I'll still call it Boaty McBoatface.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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".
With Schrodinger waves it is always the death of the ships cat that causes the sinking, at least in the Bermuda triangle.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
> A boat is a small to medium size vessel that stops being a boat and becomes a ship
A boat becomes a ship, like a puppy becomes a dog and a kitten becomes a cat? That's really cool; I didn't know that.
Furious and Glorious were converted from "Large Light Cruisers" into carriers during WWI
Eventually they ended up with a full length flight deck
You don't need a rogue wave to explain why a limping, overloaded, structurally unsound ship sank.
But apart from the fact that it was limping, overloaded and structurally unsound, what other explanation for the sinking, that doesn't involve mysterious alien forces, have you got?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it