The culprit causing ships to disappear in the Bermuda Triangle
British scientists believe that rogue waves over 30 meters high are the culprit in sinking many ships in the Bermuda Triangle.
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A team of experts at the University of Southampton, England, speculated that a natural phenomenon called rogue waves could explain the mysterious disappearances of ships in the Bermuda Triangle.Sunreported yesterday. In the Channel 5 documentary Bermuda Triangle Enigma, they used an indoor simulator to recreate the many violent waves.
Rogue waves, which last only a few minutes, were first observed by satellites off the coast of South Africa in 1997. Some of the waves were more than 100 feet high. The team built a model of the USS Cyclops, a massive ship that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in 1918, killing 300 people. Because of its massive size and flat bottom, the model quickly became submerged in water.
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Dr Simon Boxall, an ocean and earth scientist, said the famous stretch of the Atlantic Ocean could be hit by three major storms coming from different directions at the same time, creating the perfect conditions for rogue waves. Boxall believes the resulting surge could split a Cyclops-sized ship in two.
"There are multiple storms coming from the north and south at the same time. If there is another storm coming from Florida, a deadly rogue wave can form. They are very high and steep. We calculate waves of more than 30 meters. The larger the ship, the more damage it will cause. You can imagine if a rogue wave has two peaks and there is nothing supporting the ship underneath, the ship will break in two. If that happens, the ship can sink in 2-3 minutes," said Boxall.
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The Bermuda Triangle is a 700,000-kilometer stretch of water in the western North Atlantic Ocean between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. It lies on numerous shipping lanes and has claimed more than 1,000 lives in the past 100 years.
