Premieres Tuesday, November 22 at 10/9c. This series includes a historic find. A fragment of the Space Shuttle Challenger has been discovered.
The Bermuda Triangle is a section of the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North America where more than 50 ships and 20 airplanes are said to have mysteriously vanished. The area has a vaguely triangular shape, with the Atlantic coast of the Florida panhandle (in the United States), Bermuda, and the Greater Antilles marking its boundaries.
The Bermuda Triangle is the most infamous stretch of ocean in history, inspiring both fear and fascination. These waters, have swallowed countless ships and planes, as well as their crews, with some disappearing without a trace. In 1945, five US Navy planes went missing on the same night, as did a search and rescue plane sent to find them. There was no wreckage discovered. Reporters unearthed accounts of other missing planes and ships, and stories of strange phenomena date back to Columbus’ voyages. An elite team is now investigating the Bermuda Triangle with the help of a secret weapon: a map that has been in the making for decades and marks the location of unidentified undersea wrecks and anomalies.
Each week, the team will try to identify a mystery wreck, evaluating the evidence behind legends and scientific theories such as rogue waves, giant methane bubbles, ship-sucking whirlpools, and dead zones that confuse equipment and planes. One never knows what they will find in the Bermuda Triangle – and on the ocean floor, the team makes historic and significant discoveries that go beyond myth and conjecture.
Bermuda Triangle Theories
Paranormal Explanations
The authors of the Triangle have used a variety of supernatural concepts to explain the events. One theory blames it on technology left over from the mythical lost continent of Atlantis. The submerged rock formation known as the Bimini Road off the island of Bimini in the Bahamas, which some define as being in the Triangle, is sometimes linked to the Atlantis story.
Compass Variations
Many Triangle incidents include the phrase “compass problems.” While some have speculated that unusual local magnetic anomalies may exist in the area, such anomalies have yet to be discovered. Navigators have known for centuries that compasses have natural magnetic variations in relation to the magnetic poles.
Gulf Stream
The Gulf Stream is a major surface current, primarily driven by thermohaline circulation that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and then flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and, like a river, it can and does carry floating objects.
Human Error
One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to the loss of any aircraft or vessel is human error. Human stubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, Revonoc in 1958.
Violent Weather
Hurricanes are powerful storms that form in tropical waters and have historically cost thousands of lives and caused billions of dollars in damage. The sinking of Francisco de Bobadilla’s Spanish fleet in 1502 was the first recorded instance of a destructive hurricane.
Methane Hydrates
An explanation for some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of large fields of methane hydrates (a form of natural gas) on the continental shelves. Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can, indeed, sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water.
This Bermuda Triangle team may be able to answer some questions.
