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

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

that's what *they* want us to believe

Re:Of course

[paazin]

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.

Re:Of course

[JMJimmy]

It also doesn't make any sense because it was also affecting airplanes.

Someone else already solved it to my satisfaction - it's methane out-gassing. It takes takes very little to stall an airplane engine, the bubbling capsizes boats, and there's a large underground deposit in the area.

Re:Of course

[DES]

There is nothing to solve. There is no statistically significant difference between the Bermuda Triangle and any other stretch of ocean with comparable amounts of sea and air traffic. Most of the stories of mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle are either greatly exaggerated or outright fabrications.

Re:Of course

[kalpol]

Yes, and it gets more interesting: There were four ships in this class - Proteus, Cyclops, Jupiter, and Nereus. Jupiter was converted into the Navy's first aircraft carrier, USS Langley, and was scuttled eventually . The other three disappeared without a trace at various times. The prevailing theory, as far as I've heard, is that the coal eventually corroded support structures and they were lost in storms at sea. Langley was heavily damaged by the Japanese in February 1942 and scuttled near the Philippines.

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.

Things

[JustOK]

Things melt in the Bermuda Triangle. It's always exactly 180 degrees in the triangle.

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.