What is Really Happening in the Bermuda Triangle?

In the last 200 years, 20 planes, 50 ships and hundreds of people have just vanished in a small area in the Atlantic Ocean. This is a part of the ocean called the "Bermuda Triangle," or the "Devil's Triangle." It's an aquatic graveyard where over the years researchers have uncovered hundreds of wrecks. Scientific hypotheses have been crafted to try to explain what is happening here. The idea, the fear, has spread sparking countless books and documentaries attempting to prove that there's something strange happening in this triangle of ocean. There's some kind of an anomaly going on down there that we can't explain. Something that goes on down far, far below the deepest rays, the last rays of sunlight.

It's generally regarded as this area of water in the North Atlantic, drawn from Miami, to San Juan, to Bermuda. The mystery here kind of started back in 1492 when Christopher Columbus who, incidentally discovered it. This is where the biggest light bulb moment of the century goes off in this guy's head. Columbus is out there trying to reach Asia and he passes through this triangle of water, and this is where things get weird. Columbus kept a very detailed journal, on September 13th, 1492, Columbus says that as he's going along this route something weird starts happening with his compass. On this day, "at the commencement of the night, the needles turned a half point north-west, and in the morning, they turned somewhat more north-west." But it doesn't stop there. He also reported the sea rising and a strange light out in the distance.

He described it like a wax candle moving up and down. What is going on here? The mystery continued throughout the centuries. In 1606, while traveling through the triangle, a large English ship carrying 150 travelers became wrecked at Bermuda after encountering a huge hurricane. Even though this wasn't mysterious, because it was just weather, it left an impression on how people saw this body of water. In fact, it is supposed that this ship wreck inspired Shakespeare's play, "The Tempest," which often referred to Bermuda, or Bermoothes, as being vexed or cursed.

Next up is 1881. This ship is sailing from Liverpool to New York City. When it passes through the triangle, the people on board say that they came across a ghost ship with no one on board. There are varying reports on exactly what happened, but the people on board generally reported that some of the crew decided to get on the ghost ship, but then the ships were separated by a massive storm. When they were reunited with the ghost ship the next day, there was no trace of the crew. This stuff is kind of spooky if true. But wait, we're just getting started because when you get to the 20th Century, that's when the Bermuda Triangle, as a mysterious body of water, started to gain a lot of attention.

In February, 1918, one of the US Navy's largest ships, the USS Cyclops, was carrying 300 men from Salvador, Brazil to Baltimore, Maryland. The route goes right through the Bermuda Triangle, but the ship never arrived to Baltimore. Despite being able to, The Cyclops never sent out an SOS distress call. No wreck was ever found. As one article published a few years after the disappearance said, "Usually, a wooden bucket or a cork life preserver identified as belonging to a lost ship is picked up after a wreck, but not so with the Cyclops." "She just disappeared as though some gigantic monster of the sea had grabbed her, men and all, and sent her into the depths of the ocean." In an official statement, the US Navy said that, quote, "The disappearance of the ship has been one of the most baffling mysteries in the annals of the Navy." That's an official quote. Again, kind of spooky. Oh, and the Navy boats kept disappearing.

In 1941, the USS Proteus, carrying 58 passengers and a bunch of metal, suddenly vanished within the Bermuda Triangle. And then one month later, another Navy ship disappears. 61 people on board totally gone. But it wasn't until 1945 when people started to get really suspicious. This is when a bunch of World War II airplanes were doing a three-hour exercise over Grand Bahama Island, flying out and then pivoting back to their airbase, back in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. But these planes never returned and the disappearances just kept happening. A long-haul flight with 25 people and six crews disappeared in the triangle without a trace in 1948.

And a year later, it happened again to another plane of the exact same model. All in all, there have been over 70 mysterious disappearances here in this little patch of ocean, where all those years ago, Columbus noticed something strange happening with his compass. With time, more and more people started noticing. One writer in the '50s said, quote, "There have been other disappearances in this backyard sea of ours; and always the record, when the account is finally closed, has an ominous notation: 'No trace found.'" And then in 1964, the term "Bermuda Triangle" was actually coined in an article. Vincent Gadace asserted that, quote, "Sea distances are relatively short." Referring to the Bermuda Triangle. "And yet this relatively limited area is the scene of disappearances that total far beyond the laws of chance." People wanted answers.

10 years later, this book came out. The author goes deep and he makes the argument that something is really happening in the Bermuda Triangle. It's not just bad weather. This mysterious patch of water is actually a gateway to something much bigger. And then he is not afraid to explore some alternative theories about ancient civilizations and energy that was left over from those civilizations affecting this area. It's magnets, crystals, worm holes, the ripping of space time. These forces connect us to the physical potential of our universe. All shown to us because of the mysterious disappearances of the Bermuda Triangle. It was his opinion well.

There have been some serious scientific hypotheses developed on what's going on here. They range from things like, the Bermuda Triangle having a disturbance in geomagnetism, which throws off compasses and other navigational tools. Remember, Columbus? Or methane blowouts, which is a real thing. We have these huge deposits of like methane under the ocean floor, and if these blow up, you get this massive explosion, and then a huge crater that just sucks down anything that is floating on top of it. That could easily explain it, right? but then there's the plane disappearances.

Here's another simpler explanation, hurricanes. The Bermuda Triangle is in the Caribbean, which does seem to have an abnormal number of high intensity storms. That kind of makes sense. And one popular theory is that these storms can cause what are called rogue waves, which are massive waves that reach a hundred feet or more. Maybe it's those that lead to the disappearances. See, this is making more sense. You've got methane gas, geomagnetism, tons of storms in the Caribbean. It makes sense that this is a perilous place for planes and boats. These are scientific explanations that validate the Bermuda Triangle. We don't need Atlantis, and crystals, and aliens. We have geomagnetism and weather systems. Rational explanations for the Bermuda Triangle.

Humans have developed an amazing tool for seeing reality. Instead of relying on our own observations, which usually need to be couched as stories, and that are limited by how much we can hold in our brain at once. Instead of this, we can collect hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of observations about the world, and they don't have to fit in our brains all at once because we can record them over time, and then process and aggregate them with math or maps. And if you did that, you would see that, of the tens of thousands of recorded accidents or casualties at sea recorded over the course of 20 years, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary here. It doesn't even make the top 10 most dangerous ocean regions in the world, at least according to another analysis, another data set.

All of these are just hypothesis and scientists are not still sure about the exact reality which is happening in the Bermuda triangle.