04x12 - The Deadly Bermuda Triangle

[bunniefuu]

Tonight, it's the most notorious

stretch of ocean on the planet.

Everyone knows

about the Bermuda Triangle,

but yet nobody knows

what's going on over there.

A place where ships, planes,

and unsuspecting travelers

sometimes disappear.

An expl*si*n, or a freak wave,

or even just a crash would leave

some debris behind.

So, how come there isn't any?

Now, we explore the top theories

surrounding

this enduring mystery.

We have plenty of records

of rogue waves

outright destroying

oceangoing vessels.

We know that Bermuda

is teeming with volcanic rock

that makes compasses go crazy.

These planes

are flying at 4,000 feet.

I don't care

if it's the perfect storm,

no wave can do that.

What could cause so many

unexplained vanishings

inside Bermuda's

infamous triangle?

1881, Liverpool, England,

a passenger ship

named the Ellen Austin

sets sail for New York City.

The Ellen Austin,

helmed by Captain A.J. Griffin,

has a full manifest

of immigrants

excited to start a life

in the New World.

Back then, it was a long journey

across the Atlantic

about six weeks' time.

Now, halfway in,

the captain decides

to alter their route

to the south.

We can't say for sure

why this is,

but turns out to be a bad idea.

Soon after,

the ship is becalmed,

and without wind,

it simply drifts.

A few days later,

another boat appears

moving erratically.

No one

can be seen aboard this ship,

nor is there a name or a flag

that identifies the vessel.

It appears to abandoned.

The captain pulls his ship

alongside the strange vessel,

and some of the sailors

cautiously board it.

What the find,

or rather, don't find,

is very strange.

It's an empty ship.

There's no logbook,

there's no sign of v*olence,

nothing to explain

the missing sailors.

Stranger still,

the valuable cargo,

a hold of mahogany wood,

is all still perfectly intact.

Captain Griffin

takes the schooner as salvage

and puts some of his

best crewmen aboard.

The wind picks up,

and these two ships

now set sail together

to New York.

But soon,

they meet a turbulent storm

that separates them.

When the weather clears

a few days later,

Captain Griffin has to go

searching for the other ship.

And when they finally spot it

and pull up alongside,

it's eerily quiet.

Shockingly,

the ship is empty again.

None of the new crew members

can be found,

there's no bloodshed, no damage

from the storm, nothing.

It's as if they all just

disappeared into thin air.

Once, okay, that's a little bit

weird, I'll give you that.

But twice?

Now, it's getting scary.

Afraid to lose

any more of his crew,

Captain Griffin leaves

the mysterious ship behind.

According to records we have

from Lloyds of London,

the Ellen Austin

finishes its voyage alone,

docking in New York

on February 11th, 1881.

I cannot imagine

what the surviving crew

must have been thinking.

Two crews on that boat,

including some of their friends,

just disappear

seemingly into thin air.

What could explain

the strange events

witnessed by the crew

of the Ellen Austin?

They don't know it at the time,

but they've encountered

this mysterious ship

in an area of the Atlantic Ocean

that has been known to mariners

for hundreds of years

as a place to fear

a place they accidentally

drifted into.

In this stretch of the ocean,

there are countless stories

of shipwrecks and lost boats.

In 1800, the USS Pickering

disappears en route to Delaware

carrying 90 people.

In 1814, the USS Wasp vanishes

along with 140 passengers.

And in 1921,

the Carroll A. Deering is lost

and ultimately found abandoned

near North Carolina.

But the actual location

where the vessels go missing

isn't defined until 1964.

Journalist Vincent Gaddis

catalogs some of the strange

goings on in an article,

and he finally comes up

with a name

for this mysterious area.

He calls it

the Bermuda Triangle.

The Bermuda Triangle covers

about 500,000 square miles

of the Atlantic Ocean,

between Florida,

Bermuda, and Puerto Rico.

It has claimed numerous victims.

As recently as 2015,

two boys disappeared

in the Triangle

during a fishing trip that left

out of Tequesta, Florida.

As the losses have piled up,

the area has become infamous,

legendary worldwide, even.

Everyone knows

about the Bermuda Triangle,

but yet nobody knows

what's going on over there.

There have been

a number of different theories.

One of the earliest comes from

Christopher Columbus.

Columbus is actually

one of the first Europeans

to cross through

the Bermuda Triangle in 1492,

and wouldn't you know it,

he almost immediately

encounters a problem.

The Santa Maria

and her sister ships

get stuck

in an abundance of algae,

which in Columbus' diary,

he refers to as weeds.

The ships are stuck

for three days

and the sailors

become paranoid and panicked.

They fear running aground

or being tangled in the weeds

and being dragged

to the ocean floor.

The crew would eventually

manage to cut their way out,

but they remain convinced that

this is a dangerous area,

all thanks to highly unusual

seaweed.

What Columbus

and his men call weeds,

scientists eventually

name sargassum,

from the Spanish word sargasso,

meaning seaweed.

The area

ultimately becomes known

as the Sargasso Sea.

The Sargasso Sea

measures about 700 miles wide

and 2,000 miles long.

It takes up about two-thirds

of the Bermuda Triangle,

and is full of these

dense mats of sargassum.

Could seaweed explain

the loss of so many vessels?

Sargassum is a seaweed.

It's made of long thin st*lks,

and then there are lots

of leaves,

and air-filled sacs

called pneumatocysts.

If you get stuck in it,

the sargassum

wraps around the rudder

so you can't steer,

and barnacles begin

to grow on the ship,

slowing it down.

But getting stuck

is just one small part

of the problem.

When sargassum groups together

and begins to rot,

as it decomposes, it produces

hydrogen sulfide gas.

This gas smells really awful,

like rotten eggs,

and it's toxic.

If you breathe in

this hydrogen sulfide,

it can irritate your eyes,

your nose, and your throat.

But it can also cause some

serious psychological issues

if inhaled for an extended

period of time,

possibly even insanity.

A recent study

in Nanchang, China, in 2021

tested the effects

of hydrogen sulfide on rodents.

And they concluded

without a doubt

that it causes

depression-like behavior.

Obviously, just getting

tangled in the seaweed

could explain a disappearing

or a wrecked ship

if it's stuck out there

for long enough.

But when you take into account

this psychological effect,

this might explain the wilder

Bermuda Triangle stories.

Could this deadly gas

explain the experience of ships

like the Ellen Austin?

Remember, the mysterious ship

that they find doesn't wreck

or disappear.

It's the passengers that do.

So, could it have been

those toxic brain-altering fumes

from the sargassum that drove

them to dive overboard?

It's possible.

An eerily similar incident

appears to take place in 1968,

but this time,

there's more evidence.

On October 31st, 1968,

British businessman

and amateur sailor

Donald Crowhurst

sets off on the Sunday Times

Golden Globe race.

It's a competition

to be the first man

to singlehandedly

nonstop sail around the world.

Unfortunately,

he's ill-prepared,

and his boat has been

hastily constructed.

He barely makes it out to sea

when he starts

encountering problems

with navigation and leaks.

But if he goes back home,

he'll lose everything

he's invested in this race

and be a laughing stock,

he'll be humiliated.

Instead, Crowhurst

devises a plan, to cheat.

He decides to stay

in the Atlantic

and radio back false coordinates

to make it seem as though

he's traversing the globe.

Eventually,

race organizers catch on

that Crowhurst's

radio communications

are not coming from

the coordinates he's giving.

So, Crowhurst goes silent.

Sometime thereafter,

he makes the mistake

of drifting

into the Bermuda Triangle.

And that's it, he's never seen

or heard from again.

Crowhurst's empty boat

is eventually found

in the Atlantic

along with a logbook.

The writings

paint a clear picture

of a descent into madness.

They start off perfectly normal,

but once he hits

the Sargasso Sea,

Crowhurst starts writing

mathematical formulas

that he claims

represent a universal truth.

He disputes Einstein's

theory of relativity,

and his magnum opus

a rambling

25,000-word meditation

on freewill, perception,

and the nature of God.

He wraps all of this up

with his final words,

quote, "I have no need

to prolong the game."

"It is finished.

It is finished.

It is the mercy."

This is someone

who has experienced

some sort of mental instability,

which may have led

to his su1c1de.

But was this due

to prolonged exposure

to rotting sargassum?

Let's just assume

that sargassum is to blame

for the Ellen Austin

and the Crowhurst incidents,

along with other entanglements

and shipwrecks.

The problem is,

this doesn't solve

all the mysteries

of what's been going on here.

While the Sargasso Sea

is pretty sizeable,

it only takes up part

of the Bermuda Triangle.

There are many incidents

on ships

that didn't come

anywhere close to the seaweed.

So, we know for sure

that it's not the whole answer.

There must be something else

going on.

From the time

of Christopher Columbus,

the dangers

of the Bermuda Triangle

are ascribed to deadly seaweed.

It's an interesting idea,

but because seaweed only covers

part of the Triangle,

it can't explain everything.

Could another sailor's tale

offer a different explanation?

It starts off

as something of a legend

among weather-hardened,

sea-weary sailors.

As they share stories

over a pint in the pub,

you may hear a tale

of some enormous wave

as big as a mountain

capable of destroying a ship,

sweeping away its crew,

or just swallowing it whole.

And for most of

the 500-or-so-year history

of transatlantic shipping,

these have been thought

to be myths or exaggerations.

Then, in the 19th century,

French explorer

Jules Dumont d'Urville

reports seeing 100-foot waves

in a different body of water

the Indian Ocean.

However, no one believes him.

During that time, the models

that oceanographers use

to predict wave height say

that these random giant waves

are an impossibility.

But a recent discovery

shows d'Urville

might have been right.

These phenomena have been

observed, measured, and proven,

and we call them rogue waves.

The proof comes

on New Year's Day, 1995.

About 100 miles

off the coast of Norway,

there's an oil-drilling platform

called the Draupner.

In addition

to its main equipment,

it contains a whole

slew of instruments

that can monitor wave height,

slope, acceleration, et cetera.

On January 1st of 1995,

a laser range finder

on the bottom of this

oil-drilling platform

measures a wave

headed for the Draupner.

The Draupner wave,

as it becomes known,

seems to come out of nowhere

and measures 85 feet high.

It has characteristics

that don't fit

any previous wave model.

Researchers have found

that rogue waves differ

from regular waves

in a few ways.

First is that they are greater

than twice the size

of surrounding waves

these things are massive.

And they are also

notoriously unpredictable

and arise unexpectedly

from directions

other than the prevailing winds.

So, these things could

potentially come from anywhere.

These rogue waves,

because they are so gigantic,

so tall, so steep,

and moving so quickly,

they can carry up to 16 times

the amount of force

than a regular wave.

And in fact,

the bigger the ship,

the worse you fare

when it comes to rogue waves,

because these rogue waves,

they don't come on slowly.

They're not giant, wide things.

They're very sharp,

they're like cliffs of water.

And so, when a ship

encounters a rogue wave,

it gets sent straight up

the side of the cliff,

and then when it reaches

the top, it teeters over

and slams back down

into the water.

And the bigger

the ship you have,

the more force there is,

and the more damage

that rogue wave can do.

That kind of massive force

grossly exceeds the limit

of what ocean vessels today

can tolerate.

So, you could only imagine what

it would do to a wooden ship

from hundreds of years ago.

It would decimate it

in one fell swoop.

But scientists still

aren't certain what causes them.

One idea is that they're caused

by constructive interference.

This is when different waves

travel at different speeds

and start to pile up

on each other.

Now, constructive

interference can occur

when huge storms converge from

multiple directions at once.

The Bermuda Triangle

is well known for such storms.

The Triangle is right in

the middle of Hurricane Alley,

where storms from the north

and the south can come together.

If there's a third storm

that comes in from Florida,

forget about it.

You've got the recipe

for a deadly rogue wave.

This phenomenon might explain

a series

of mysterious shipwrecks.

One ship

that may have been impacted

by these rogue waves

is the USS Cyclops.

Back in 1918, it was one

of the largest ships

in the U.S. Navy,

measuring 550 feet long

with a crew of over 300 people.

On March 4th,

after the ship is loaded up

with over 11,000 tons

of manganese ore,

it embarks on a voyage from

the West Indies to Baltimore.

After nine days at sea,

the Cyclops sends a message

that reads, quote,

"weather fair, all well."

This is the last message

it ever sends.

The entire ship

just seems to vanish,

along with its crew,

without even an SOS.

It's an absolute

heartbreaking catastrophe.

To this day,

aside from active combat,

the USS Cyclops was the largest

loss of life to the Navy.

In 1941, two more Navy ships

meet a similar fate.

The USS Proteus, decommissioned

after World w*r I,

departs the Virgin Islands

with 58 crew members

and a cargo of bauxite.

It never reaches

its destination.

A month later, the USS Nereus

leaves from the same place

with the same type of cargo.

Sadly, it suffers

the same tragedy.

The ship

and the 61 people aboard

are never seen again.

Both the Proteus and the Nereus

are sister ships to the Cyclops.

All three, massive,

strongly fortified vessels,

all gone.

How can an enormous ship

just go "poof"

and just disappear?

Even if you destroy a big ship,

there's gonna be lots of bits

and pieces floating around.

It is very odd for a giant ship

to go missing without a trace.

But in these cases,

there's nothing.

These certainly sound

like candidates

for rogue wave disasters.

In 2018,

oceanographer Simon Boxall

attempts to prove this theory.

At the University

of Southampton,

Boxall conducts an experiment

to investigate if rogue waves

could destroy modern

oceangoing vessels.

And specifically,

Dr. Boxall was trying to explore

whether the USS Cyclops

was destroyed by a rogue wave.

And we can't recreate

that exact scenario,

so instead,

he built a scale model.

And once

the simulators are turned on,

enormous waves rise up

and easily destroy the model.

Boxall's study demonstrates just

how powerful these waves are.

They come out of nowhere.

You don't have warning.

You may not even have time

to send a distress signal

before you're simply

consumed by it.

For some, this experiment

solves a long-standing mystery.

We've actually proven

the existence of rogue waves,

and we've proven that

they can happen

all over the Bermuda Triangle.

Some people would say that,

yeah, rogue waves

are likely responsible

for the disappearance

of the USS Cyclops as well

as a number of other ships

in the Bermuda Triangle.

And for the non-wrecked boats

that have turned up

with their crew missing,

perhaps a small rogue wave

could have tipped the boat,

and everybody fell overboard.

But this still

doesn't explain every incident.

Now, if you came to me

with all of this information

and told me that rogue waves

are responsible

for every single missing ship

in the Bermuda Triangle,

I might have a difficult time

arguing with you,

but ships aren't the only things

that have disappeared here.

What about all the airplanes?

For centuries,

ships have gone missing

in the notorious

Bermuda Triangle.

But after airplanes

are invented in 1903,

some follow the same

mysterious fate.

Perhaps the most famous incident

occurs on December 5th, 1945.

Around 2pm, five U.S. Navy

torpedo bombers

collectively known as Flight 19

take off from

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida,

on a routine training flight.

The 14 men on these planes

are extremely

competent soldiers.

They've logged over 300 hours

in the air.

They know what they're doing.

and the flight's leader,

Lieutenant Charles Taylor, is an

incredibly experienced pilot

who successfully flew numerous

combat missions in World w*r II.

So, we're talking about

the best of the best.

These are Top g*n type of guys.

The exercise begins normally.

Everything starts smoothly.

But soon after entering

the Bermuda Triangle,

something strange happens.

Lieutenant Taylor radios

that his plane's compass

is malfunctioning,

and he believes

that they're flying

in the wrong direction.

But they're not.

Something has caused the airmen

or their equipment

to become

mysteriously disoriented.

The situation worsens

when a heavy storm rolls in.

At this point,

the pilots are very confused.

They believe they've drifted

hundreds of miles off course,

somewhere near the Florida Keys.

As they get farther

and farther away,

their radio communications

become increasingly faint.

And after hours of flying,

they're running out of fuel.

Their last recorded

communications

discuss having

to ditch the planes

when they get below

10 gallons of fuel.

From that point on,

their transmission cuts out.

The only thing

the naval base hears

is an eerie buzz.

It's the last time

any of these men

are seen or heard from.

Despite their high-level

skills and some of the day's

most technologically

advanced aircraft,

all five planes

and 14 crew members are lost.

The tragedy doesn't end there.

The Navy immediately releases

two large seaplanes

to hunt for Flight 19.

After 27 minutes,

one of those seaplanes

radios back that

they're approaching

Flight 19's last location.

But then, this rescue plane

is never heard from again.

It vanishes off the radar.

The blip just disappears.

Shockingly, the remains

of that plane

and its 13 crewmen

are never recovered either.

The other plane keeps looking,

but finds nothing,

and ends up

just returning to the base.

No bodies, no debris.

No sign at all

that these aircraft

even ever existed.

Six planes and 27 men are gone.

It's like they just vanished

off the face of the Earth.

Now, all of a sudden,

the sargassum

and rogue wave theories,

though they are scientifically

credible,

they seem a lot less likely

as the root cause

of the Triangle's problems,

because they simply

don't impact the air.

The planes are flying

at 4,000 feet.

I don't care

if it's the perfect storm,

no wave can do that.

People have studied Flight 19

for almost 80 years now,

and nobody believes

that they were brought down

by waves or seaweed.

Then, in 2015,

Russian scientist Igor Yeltsov

offers a possible explanation.

While working

at the Trofimuk Institute

of Petroleum Geology

and Geophysics,

Yeltsov proposes that

the Bermuda Triangle's dangers

are caused

by an undersea build-up

and subsequent expl*si*n

of methane gas.

Methane itself

is a colorless, odorless gas.

You might be familiar

with methane as natural gas

to heat your home.

But in very special cases,

especially at the bottom

of the ocean,

these pockets of natural gas

can get so compressed,

that they turn

essentially into an ice,

into a form of solid.

If the sea floor cracks,

or that ice gets pushed up

to touch the water,

an exceptional amount

of gas can be released.

You ever drop

dry ice into water,

like, for Halloween, you know,

so you can make that fake fog?

Now, imagine all that happened

in the span of an instant

with all that gas

trapped in a bubble under water.

The gas heats up

the surrounding water

and surges

quickly to the surface.

Methane is highly flammable,

so the intense heat

from the plane's exhaust

could cause a massive expl*si*n,

enough to blow the plane

to smithereens.

Could this also

explain what happened

to the missing rescue plane?

The night

of the Flight 19 incident,

a tanker ship,

the SS Gaines Mills,

reports seeing flames from

an apparent expl*si*n

billowing 100 feet high.

Maybe the

search-and-rescue seaplane

flies through the same patch

of methane gas,

their engine exhaust

ignites the methane

and destroys the plane.

But let's say

the plane doesn't explode

and the pilot manages

to keep it aloft.

If an airplane

were to hit this gas bubble,

there's a few possible things

that could go wrong.

For example,

if a plane suddenly flies

into a patch of methane gas,

a pilot would quickly

lose control.

His wings, his engines,

his instruments

are all calibrated

to create loft in air,

not methane, which has

a totally different density.

So, the plane would just drop.

Well, methane affects

the human brain too.

If a pilot inhales the gas,

it will reduce

the amount of oxygen

they draw in from the air.

This can cause

mood changes, slurred speech,

vision problems, memory loss,

and most notably,

disorientation.

So, if those 14 men

that were a part of Flight 19

inhaled a significant amount

of methane gas,

it is possible that they would

become so disoriented

that they'd have trouble

reading their compasses

and discerning where they are.

In 2016, one year after Yeltsov

publishes his theory,

another team

looks for further evidence

to support it.

Researchers

at Arctic University in Norway

study multiple giant craters

on the floor of the Barents Sea.

These massive craters

on the sea floor

were created

thousands of years ago,

and the best explanation

for them

is exploding methane deposits.

And these same craters are

present in the Bermuda Triangle.

So, these methane gas explosions

have almost certainly

happened there.

If true,

this story could also explain

the Triangle's lost ships.

When the gas

explodes underwater,

it creates this giant sinkhole

at the surface.

Think of a toilet flushing

with extreme force.

The suction created

from the blast

would suck any large object

down below the surface,

never to be seen again

even something

as large as a ship.

Just like in an airplane,

methane offsets the oxygen

which we need to breathe,

so it could easily

confuse sailors

that are in the ocean around it.

It checks most of the boxes

of what we've seen

in the Bermuda Triangle.

Unfortunately, until we get

some sort of eyewitness account,

we won't know

if it's the answer.

Over the last 500 years,

the Bermuda Triangle

has claimed some 8,000 lives

and hundreds of ships

and airplanes,

none with a definitive cause.

But in 2019,

a shocking new theory emerges

thanks to a scientist

who experienced

a surprising event in the area.

One of the top investigators

studying shipwrecks

in the Bermuda Triangle

is Dr. Phillipe Rouja.

He's the Custodian

of Historic Wrecks at Bermuda's

Department of the Environment

and Natural Resources.

It's his job to go

in and out of the Triangle

all the time, and to investigate

and keep tabs on the hundreds

of shipwrecks surrounding

Bermuda.

So far, Rouja has managed

to defy the odds, despite some

unusual incidents.

When he was out diving

in the early 2000s,

he encountered a strange

phenomenon.

None of his compasses

were actually working.

He had multiple compasses

on his dive gear and his boat,

and they were all pointing

in different ways,

none of which were accurate.

And because

he's a lifelong local

and conditions were clear,

he was able to find his way

back to Bermuda by sight.

Rouja has since

discovered several more

of what he calls

hotspots in the Triangle,

places that make

navigational tools useless.

Clearly, this could be

the reason

why some of the wrecks,

both planes and boats,

could have happened in the area.

But why is it happening?

After hearing

many stories like Rouja's,

scientists investigate.

In a 2019 study

published in Nature,

they might have found the cause,

and it has to do with

the make-up of Bermuda itself.

Bermuda is a volcanic island,

like Hawaii and many others.

But researchers discover that

Bermuda has one major

difference.

Most lava comes

from about 20 miles deep.

But the lava that formed Bermuda

came from a whopping 400 miles

below the surface of the Earth.

That's immensely deeper,

and obviously much closer

to the Earth's core.

This is entirely unique

to Bermuda.

This geologic feature turns out

to have surprising consequences.

Because this volcanic rock

in and around Bermuda

originated so deep

within the Earth,

it has a heavy concentration

of a mineral called magnetite.

In fact,

Bermuda is 18-20% magnetite,

nearly 20 times more

than typical soil.

Magnetite is the most magnetic

naturally occurring mineral

on the planet.

And this is what

could be making so many ships

and airplanes go haywire

in the Triangle.

In other words,

Bermuda is basically

a giant magnet.

This phenomenon can be

pretty easily demonstrated.

If you pass a compass

over a small amount

of Bermuda's magnetite-rich

limestone,

it can throw it off

by several degrees.

And that's just one little rock.

There's 500 billion tons

of this stuff

in the Bermuda Triangle,

so just imagine

what that could do.

Without a trustworthy compass,

ships can easily veer off course

and crash into the rocks.

But what about planes?

Planes would have problems

with not only their compass,

but also their

altimeter readings.

A pilot could get

quite disoriented

and potentially make

a fatal mistake.

According to one pilot,

magnetite could also

be powerful enough

to generate a literal cloud

of magnetism.

In 2017, Bruce Gernon

publishes a book

called

"Beyond the Bermuda Triangle."

In it, he recounts

many pilots' stories

saying they've been in

this electronic fog.

Until the modern advent

of GPS navigation,

the compass is the tool

that enables travelers

to accurately navigate

the globe.

It does this by always pointing

in a constant direction

magnetic north.

It can, however,

be instantly rendered inaccurate

by the presence

of a strong magnet.

According to Gernon,

electronic fog

is like a grayish cloud

of electromagnetic fields

that form above the ocean.

It can appear out of nowhere

and completely engulf

an aircraft.

Gernon himself says

he experiences this phenomenon

while flying through the heart

of the Bermuda Triangle.

His airplane is suddenly

surrounded by a strange fog

that he can't break through.

It seems to stick to his plane,

and he experiences

the sensation of zero gravity

as it propels

his aircraft forward.

According to Gernon,

once he's out of the Triangle,

the cloud disintegrates.

When his instruments work again,

he realizes that he just

traveled 100 miles

in only three minutes

and 20 seconds.

He landed

30 minutes ahead of time.

The fog practically

teleported him.

Gernon and the others

he cites in his book

believe that

the natural magnetism

in the Bermuda Triangle

may be giving the droplets

within the fog an

electromagnetic charge.

If this is true,

then those droplets

would naturally be attracted

to anything they encounter,

and once they're attached,

they're dense enough

to carry a vessel

right along with them.

It's kind of like

a magical carpet ride,

where if you're lucky,

it'll send you

in the direction

that you wanna go.

But if you're unlucky,

it might send you

into a watery grave.

Despite Gernon's claims,

mainstream science has yet

to support the existence

of electronic fog.

Gernon himself

isn't a scientist.

He's an accomplished pilot

and flight instructor,

but not a physicist.

And based on

a lot of his experience

flying through the Triangle,

this is what

he personally believes.

Now, Gernon claims

to have worked

with numerous

scientists who all believe

that this phenomenon

is plausible,

and maybe to him, it is.

But until we have some hard data

or visual evidence

like a video recording,

I think it's too early

to blame electronic fog

for disappearances

in the Bermuda Triangle.

Meanwhile, the magnetite

around Bermuda is proven,

and we're still

only beginning to uncover

all the strange effects

it might be causing.

For some,

the most startling thing

about the Bermuda Triangle

mystery

isn't the number

of lives it's claimed.

It's the number of vessels

that have seemingly vanished

into thin air.

When ships and planes go down,

most of the time, we can find

at least some of the wreckage.

Even 2014's Malaysia Flight 370,

one of the most mysterious

plane crashes of all time,

we still don't know

where it crashed.

But a bunch of wreckage

eventually washed up.

However, with the disappearances

in the Bermuda Triangle,

it's a different story.

These things just disappear

like they never existed.

Not even a trace of an airframe

or an anchor chain.

For a number of these

disappearances,

such as Flight 19

or the USS Cyclops,

massive search efforts

are undertaken,

yet nothing is ever found.

But logically, an expl*si*n,

or a freak wave,

or even just a crash

would leave some debris behind.

So, how come there isn't any?

In 2014, physics

and meteorology professor

David Pares suggests

a surprising new answer

to that question.

He thinks that some

of these vessels

were never found because they

were transported out

of the Bermuda Triangle

and into another place

not by magic,

but a scientific phenomenon

that he calls a space warp,

but you might know

as a wormhole.

A wormhole is a tunnel

or a passage

through space and time.

It's basically a shortcut

created by gravity

which can take you from

one part of the universe

and place you in another.

Wormholes are strictly

theoretical

at this time,

they've only been proven

to be mathematically possible

on paper.

They were discovered in 1935

by physicists Albert Einstein

and Nathan Rosen,

which is why they're also called

Einstein-Rosen bridges.

And these are based

on Albert Einstein's

general theory of relativity,

which tells us that space

and time are interwoven.

We actually live

in a four-dimensional universe

three dimensions of space

and one dimension of time.

Is it possible that a wormhole

could exist

in the Bermuda Triangle?

If you take a look back at

Christopher Columbus' accounts

traveling through

the Bermuda Triangle,

he mentions something

incredibly strange.

He reports seeing

a great flame of fire

crashing into the sea one night.

And afterwards, he sees

strange lights in the distance,

and his compass readings

are erratic.

Today, experts believe

Columbus was witnessing

a meteor strike,

and if that's true,

there are those that believe

it could cause

enough of a gravitational

anomaly to form a wormhole.

Today, many institutions

and top physicists are delving

into the complex science

behind possible wormholes.

Quantum mechanics

is the science of studying

subatomic particles,

the smallest building blocks

of our universe,

and how their motion

and interaction

relates to energy.

Within quantum mechanics,

we understand

we know that at

the tiniest scales in nature,

microscopic wormholes

can naturally form

and then just

snap out of existence.

Now, we don't know

how to scale wormholes up

to fit a giant ship or aircraft,

but anything can happen.

Theoretically,

wormholes allow you

to travel not just

through space,

but also through time.

It is actually possible,

if wormholes do exist,

for you to be able

to travel through them

and end up in your own past.

And when you start

thinking about that possibility,

there's some stories

from the Bermuda Triangle

that perfectly fit

that description.

Including one that takes place

on June 7th, 1964.

There's a veteran pilot

who charters vacations

in the Bahamas, and her name

is Carolyn Cascio.

She's flying

through the Triangle,

and when she approaches

Grand Turk Island,

something odd happens.

Cascio radios the tower and says

that despite her instruments

telling her

that she's above the island,

when she looks out her window,

it appears to be uninhabited.

This doesn't make sense.

Grand Turk has buildings,

farms, houses,

and a Navy base.

It has an airport

and a population

of nearly 5,000 people.

The tower assures Cascio

that she is at the right place

and clears her to land

at any time.

She circles frantically

over a dozen times,

and all she sees

are beaches and trees.

There are no towns,

no buildings,

and definitely no airport.

Cascio finally decides

to turn around

and go back the way she came.

Sadly, she is never seen again.

Her last words are, quote,

"Is there no way out of this?"

Wormhole enthusiasts

believe that this is proof

that she actually

traveled back in time

to a time before

Grand Turk Island was developed.

Even if you accept

the possibility of a wormhole

large enough to transport

a plane,

based on our current

understanding of science,

it would be impossible

for a person or object

to even survive the trip

due to the crushing gravity

within.

Obviously, if we could prove

the existence of wormholes,

that would be

one of the greatest

scientific discoveries

of all time.

But until that day comes,

researchers are gonna have to

stick to the science they know

to solve the Bermuda Triangle

mystery.

The phrase "Bermuda Triangle"

conjures both curiosity

and fear,

and has inspired

many differing theories

around the strange

disappearances

in this mysterious area.

Now, you might be thinking,

"Well, the sargassum theory

"seems plausible,

"but that's just one small area

of the Bermuda Triangle."

Okay, so then,

how 'bout the rogue waves?

They certainly happen

in the Triangle,

but like sargassum,

they don't explain

the disappearance of airplanes.

Well, then how 'bout

a methane gas expl*si*n?

Maybe, but you'd think

that a large expl*si*n

would leave debris behind.

What about magnetite, wormholes,

or even electromagnetic fog?

Honestly, any one of these

could be attributed

to the disappearances

within the Triangle.

Or, perhaps, could all

these theories be true?

We generally talk

about the Bermuda Triangle

like there's only one

explanation for this mystery.

But given

the numerous disappearances

across more than 500 years,

there's absolutely no reason

why it needs to be only one

of these things.

There's a combination

of deadly factors

that are existing here.

Let's start with

the methane gas theory.

We know these things happen

within the Bermuda Triangle

based on evidence of craters

on the ocean floor.

So, it's likely that some

of these boat disappearances

were caused by methane bubbles.

Other ships

have almost certainly been hit

with rogue waves.

We now know that they've been

scientifically proven to exist.

We have records,

we even have photographs.

And the Bermuda Triangle

is in a location on the Earth

that is ripe for the formation

of rogue waves.

So, it's quite possible

that a freak wave

could rise out of nowhere

and snap a vessel in two,

causing it to quickly sink

and essentially disappear.

There also may be a simple

explanation

for why no wreckage is found.

Within the Bermuda Triangle

is an undersea trench

called the Milwaukee Deep.

This is the deepest spot

within the Atlantic,

over 27,000 feet down.

The Milwaukee Deep

is relatively unexplored.

There have only been

a couple expeditions

to those depths in that location

throughout all of history.

If your ship

ends up sinking this deep,

it's really unlikely anyone's

gonna be able to spot it.

What about the vessels

that aren't destroyed?

Not every anomaly

in the Bermuda Triangle

involves destruction.

Sometimes vessels

just get hopelessly lost.

We know that Bermuda is teeming

with volcanic rock

called magnetite

that makes compasses go crazy.

There are even warnings

on British admiralty charts

near Bermuda cautioning sailors

that their compasses

may be off

by as much as 14 degrees.

I think the magnetic anomalies

are the most likely culprit

for the region's

plane crashes as well.

While they used

to be more common,

we've seen very few casualties

since the advent

of GPS navigation.

One day, we may finally

get some substantial evidence,

or capture a video

of a destructive rogue wave,

or of the mysterious

electronic fog,

or, I don't know,

maybe a wormhole will open up

right over Bermuda

for the whole world to see.

But until then,

I think it's best

not to limit our minds

to what the Bermuda Triangle

could or couldn't be,

because there could be

a new scientific explanation

next year.

The possibilities are endless,

and that's what's kept

people fascinated

by the Bermuda Triangle

for so long.

In 2022, a particularly tragic

discovery was made

in the Bermuda Triangle

by an underwater film crew

not the wreckage of a plane

or boat, but of the destroyed

1986 space shuttle Challenger,

another unexpected moment

in the long saga

of this mysterious area.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."