Between 1945 and 2017, more than 10 planes have gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle. Add the 14 ships that disappeared there between 1800 and 2015, and you’ve got yourself a serious problem. How can people and crafts simply vanish without a trace? The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle has flummoxed people for years, but now scientists are confident they’ve “solved” it.
- So, where is the Bermuda Triangle? We’ve all heard of it, but I’ll be honest: For the longest time, I had no idea where it actually was. As it turns out, it refers to a 500,000 square kilometer area in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of North America and near Florida and Puerto Rico.
- There is no shortage of conspiracy theories when it comes to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. Many people believe that it comes down to alien interference or supernatural beings, but there’s pretty much zero proof of that being the case, so let’s stay focused on reality here.
- A new documentary in the UK might hold the secret. Channel 5’s “Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle” claims to provide the answers that have eluded many of us for a long time. Spoiler alert: While interesting, the truth isn’t all that exciting.
- The Bermuda Triangle is actually an underwater volcano. Nick Hutchings, a mineral prospector, explained what the Bermuda Triangle actually is in the documentary. “Bermuda’s basically a sea mountain – it’s an underwater volcano. 30 million years ago, it was sticking up above sea level,” he said. “It has now eroded away and we’re left with the top of a volcano. We have a few core samples, which have magnetite in them. It’s the most magnetic naturally occurring material on Earth.”
- Hutchings did his own experiment. He collected a rock sample from the Bermuda Triangle and got a compass. When the rock was placed on a flat surface and Hutchings held the compass over the rock, the needle on the compass absolutely went nuts.
- The magnetite in the rock ruins compasses. It makes navigating completely and totally impossible as compasses just can’t get their bearings. Sure, we have some solid technology these days, but that wasn’t the case back in the day. “You can just imagine the ancient mariners sailing past Bermuda. It would be very disconcerting,” Hutchings added.
- In other words, people went missing and died simply because they got lost. There’s no real mystery to the Bermuda Triangle — it really is this simple. Because the magnetite interfered with the navigation systems, ships and planes were unable to figure out where to go, and likely either ran out of fuel before reaching land in the case of planes, or went entirely in the wrong direction and out into the ocean for ships.
