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The Bermuda Triangle:
Said to be a mysterious vortex claiming lives, ships and planes at will.
"Something really strange is going on here guys"
Some are never found
"we searched and found absolutely nothing"
Others turn up as headstones on the ocean floor.
the bermuda triagle ranks Along side UFO and alien abduction it´s one of the most fearest supernatural phenomena on earth.
now we will try to unravel its secrets,
finding out what lies behind the myth.
by Flying into the heart of the Bermuda Triangle.
this is the million square kilometers of the Atlantic Ocean
known as "The Bermuda Triangle."
Weather condition here can wreak havoc with planes and ships.
A single Bermuda Triangle hurricane can contain more energy than 10,000 nuclear bombs.
Ocean swells can climb to 50ft, the height of a 5 story building.
Winds reach up to 200 miles per hour,
4 times stronger than a Gale Force Wind.
Even in calm weather, this Triangle of water, stretching between Miami, bermuda and puerto rico
is known to swallow victims¡..
Some disappearing without a trace¡
no SOS¡
no survivors to tell their tales¡.
Others at rest in the graveyard of ships and aircraft beneath the waves.
Firm statistics are impossible to come by,
but there are ships, planes and people have vanished without explanation
others for reasons that have come to light later on.
In 1918, the supply ship USS Cyclops left Barbados.
Shortly afterwards all contact ceased.
And in 1963, the SS Marine Sulphur Queen made a routine call from near Key West
- and was never heard of again.
Scientists insist there is nothing unusual about the Triangle waters,
and they are probably right.
Yet the stories, the legends, have only grown with time.
so why this myth about a stretch of water?
After World War II, came the dawn of the Cold War¡
and the terrifying prospect of nuclear conflict.
Uncertainty and fear helped foster inexplicable myths
that flourished in movies and popular culture.
Unidentified Flying Objects - reported over American soil¡.
Alien-abductions - blamed for numerous disappearances¡.
Every far-fetched tale seemed within the realm of possibility.
These tensions of the sci-fi age
spawned book and newspaper reports of supposed disappearances
and supernatural happenings.
¡just as the number of air and sea journeys
- and the casualties - were increasing dramatically.
By the mid 1960s,
a writer for "ARGOSY" magazine coined the term "Bermuda Triangle,"
elevating the myth to even greater heights.
But what is real and what is myth?
meet the theorists, scientists, eccentrics, experts, and eyewitnesses,
all drawn to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.
Paul Vance is one man who does believe in the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.
He claims to have seen something strange on a boating trip
- possibly an UFO.
"My friend Doug Gurdon and I were leaving West Palm Beach,
started watching one particular white light
that came across the sky and then it stopped.
This was not an airplane. It was a single white light.
And after it stopped,
a cloud just appeared underneath it, it was spinning,
it kind of looked like a tornado,
but it wasn't that long as a tornado."
"Just almost at the same moment that I noticed the light stop,
my engine started running rough on my boat.
But I was so mesmerised at, at, at what I was seeing
that I hardly took notice of it.
Paul Vance's story is impossible to prove¡ or disprove.
But science does offer a few logical explanations for many Bermuda Triangle mysteries
One of the most commonly held theories revolves around weather.
Extreme weather around the world wreaks havoc with shipping and flights.
And the Bermuda Triangle is no exception
- its home to some of the most fearsome weather on the face of the planet.
Could such extremes of weather account for many of the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle?
Our first, and most obvious, candidate is the hurricane.
These monstrous swirling masses of rain and cloud
create the largest storms on Earth:
100's of miles across -
with winds of up to 200 miles an hour
- a disaster for any craft in their path.
Powerful storm surges, which crash onto land account for many hurricane-related deaths.
Their power can surprise even experienced hurricane hunters,
like storm photographer Jim Edds
who has felt the full force of a hurricane in the Bermuda Triangle.
"I was filming the, the downstairs of a house that had been gutted out by the waves,
and I moved to across the street
and as I was going there a wave came and clipped me from behind."
Edds almost lost his life as the force of the impact snatched him away.
He was dragged 300 feet in the jaws of the storm wave
before he finally managed to escape.
This time he was lucky.
Every hurricane's strength and direction
is monitored in detail by scientists at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.
Despite their efforts, Mother Nature still springs surprises.
The awesome power of storms such as August 1992's Hurricane Andrew
can trump even the best weather experts,
such as Jim Lushine, with heart-breaking results:
"I was at the Hurricane Centre working,
looking at the satellite pictures, putting out the hurricane local statements.
My wife who had lived in the house for 20 years along with my two daughters
actually talked to me on the phone and said Jim,
is this gonna miss us,
we, we think the wind is not very strong here right now.
And I said no I'm sorry honey, this is it."
When Hurricane Andrew reached the edge of the Bermuda Triangle,
it's full fury hit their home in Dade County.
"I hadn't heard anything for several hours of what was happening,
I turned the corner around the block where my house was and
my house really wasn't anymore.
Their immense destructive power
makes hurricanes among the most-studied weather systems on Earth
- and possibly the most rational explanation for the tragic events
occurring within the Bermuda Triangle.
we can learn about hurricanes may help dismantle the Triangle's mystery.
From space we watch their every move¡.
Here on Earth, some scientists even deliberately fly into the Bermuda Triangle
and into the heart of hurricanes to see what they can learn.
One such man is Robert Rogers.
I do research on hurricanes,
take measurements in the storms, we fly into the storms.
I work with computers to try to better understand how hurricanes work,
how they form¡Track, what causes them to change intensity,
produce rainfall, those sorts of issues.
First thing you need is a warm, a body of warm water.
Water forms essentially the sort of the fuel for the hurricane.
That what it needs to sustain itself, to drive the energy which then
drives the winds essentially of the storm.
Another thing that you need is you need winds that are favorable
so that the storm can preserve itself.
If you have winds that are blowing from different directions at different altitudes for example,
then the storm can't really maintain itself.
So you, you need these winds essentially all blowing from the same direction and the same speed".
Nowadays, satellite technology can warn travelers inside the Triangle
of an approaching hurricane.
Along with better navigational systems,
that may explain the recent trend for fewer calamities or disappearances with each successive year.
But the story is not complete:
the Hurricane season only lasts six months
- from June to November
- and many of the disappearances happen out of season.
Are there other natural phenomena that could be party to the mystique?
Waterspouts - tornadoes at sea - are common off the coast of southern Florida
- and they too can be deadly.
This storm over Miami evolved from a tornado into a waterspout
with winds of up to 110 miles per hour.
"Down here in South Florida we can get them quite often.
They're a very fascinating phenomena
- you can often get several waterspouts all in a row that you can watch,
you know they probably last for five or ten minutes or so.
But waterspouts can appear without warning.
"I know that there is some severe weather out there
that can affect ships.
And you can have a waterspout out there,
so you have some people inside eating lunch,
well you can get a column of air spinning and it comes down right,
right over them and they wouldn't even know it.
Dangerous and unpredictable,
waterspouts are too weak to sink big ships
or to bring down high-flying aircraft.
But they could account for a small percentage of the unexplained disappearances inside the Triangle.
But what about more familiar weather, such as thunderstorms?
Have they contributed to the myths of the Bermuda Triangle?
Thunderstorms evolve when warm, humid air rises to meet cooler air.
Regions such as the Bermuda Triangle
- from which warmed air perpetually rises - are perfect incubators.
At sea, thunderstorms form rapidly,
unleashing their full destructive power on unsuspecting planes and ships.
"There are many localised types of weather that may affect just a very small area, say
one particular area maybe 50m in, in size and then
a short distance away the weather may be just completely different.
And these can come in the form of,
of thunderstorms which will produce micro bursts,
downbursts of wind that come down from the thunderstorm
and create a great gust of wind perhaps as high as 100 miles an hour that could
tip over a ship or, or do a lot of damage to a boat like that".
Along with thunderstorms, comes lightning
- a constant threat in this part of the world.
Dave Ease has been a diveboat captain for Stuart Cove Diving in Nassau for 14 years.
He dives in the waters of the Bermuda Triangle almost every day.
"We came across a lightning storm,
we had passed pretty close to it
and you could feel every time the lightening strike or you hear,
you hear the thunder you just know to let go of the steering wheel
because if you held on to it you'd feel a little jolt
Lightning can be disorienting - even deadly
- but usually larger vessels and planes are protected
and can ride out a single strike.
Like waterspouts and thunderstorms,
lightning appears to offer no more than a partial explanation of the myth.
And there are still other factors at work in the Bermuda Triangle,
possibly helping to explain some of the so-called "mysterious" disappearances.
Not least among these
is the high incidence of drug-running and piracy
among small boats and light aircraft around the Miami coastline.
And yet, despite all such logical explanations
there is one disappearance that has arguably done more than any other
to fuel to myth of the Bermuda Triangle.
On one fair weather day at the end of the Second World War,
five naval aircraft carrying 14 young airmen vanished without a trace.
The disappearance of US Navy Flight 19
captured the public imagination
as the greatest of all Bermuda Triangle mysteries.
The scale of this calamity was made all the more tragic
by the losing of so many men just months after World War II.
These are the haunting shots of the crew of Flight 19.
These young men would become victims of one of America's greatest mysteries,
bringing international attention to the myth of the Bermuda Triangle.
Wild and weird legends have developed around Flight 19 since its disappearance,
but what are the facts?
Perhaps no one knows more about the infamous tragedy
than Bermuda Triangle expert, enthusiast and author Gian Quasar.
"In terms of the Triangle,
I consider myself the person who bothered to write the biography on it,
all the mysteries about it,
all the facts instead of the, the fiction,
instead of the legend, instead of the hearsay.
Quasar has examined all the known historical records about Flight 19
- as well as listening to the first hand accounts of witnesses from the time.
Official records reveal that instrument failure was the first sign of trouble for Flight 19.
But what really happened?
If we retrace the steps of the flight could we learn anything new?
In an authentic World War 2 Avenger aircraft,
we decide to re-fly, for perhaps the first time,
the exact, planned route of the doomed Flight 19
out over the waters of the Bermuda Triangle.
Under the leadership of experienced pilot Charles Taylor,
Flight 19 originally took off from what is now Fort Lauderdale International Airport.
The planes, 4 of them carrying a crew of 3
and one with just 2 aviators on board,
were to fly a four-sided route from Fort Lauderdale to Bimini,
Great Harbor Cay, to the island of Grand Bahama
and then back to base.
The weather was fair.
Simple enough you might think.
The first leg was to take them toward Bimini,
around 56 miles out from their Fort Lauderdale base
- with some torpedo practice over Chicken and Hen Shoal en route.
The plan shows them continuing east,
on a compass heading of 91 degrees, for 67 miles.
They were then supposed to turn North-North-West for 73 miles.
The final left turn to the west would have put them on a direct course
for their Fort Lauderdale home base.
Records show that they made the first three legs of their journey
but they never made that final leg.
They lost contact at 7:04pm,
never to be heard from again,
no remains ever to be found.
It was a tragic journey for the crewman of Flight 19
and the friends and loved ones they left behind.
Obie O'Brien,
an ex-Navy pilot war hero who signed up the year after the disaster
will pilot our Avenger bomber,
identical to the 5 planes of Flight 19.
"In nineteen fifty I was flying the Corsair in the Corsair Squadron
and we went to Korea on the USS Boxer.
I flew 40, 40 some missions and during that time
I was awarded the, the air medal."
Our pilot is from the same generation as the young and dedicated servicemen of Flight 19,
who would have been grateful to have survived the dangers of the Second World War.
To make our flight authentic,
our plane will navigate with the same basic method
as was used by Flight 19 and other pilots for years:
steering by compass and watching the islands below.
We take off from the same Fort Lauderdale runway, at the same time,
2:10 in the afternoon, as Flight 19
- although in slightly better weather conditions.
For Flight 19, 60 years before,
the first signs of trouble came when their leader, Lt Charles Taylor
radioed that he was uncertain of his position.
Jim Ward was a radio operator on a nearby naval ship that day
and heard the radio transmissions of the fateful flight.
"We heard the flight leader come in and call the tower,
and ask them if they would put their radar on and get a fix on 'em
because he wasn't quite sure where he was.
It seems inexplicable,
but it appears Taylor believed that he was over the Florida Keys,
the island chain stretching 100 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico.
It's more likely that he was almost some 200 miles further north-east.
"So the tower came back in about 15, 20 minutes and said we can't find you on the radar,
do you have any idea where you are?
He said well I think I, I've seen some islands.
He said well can you identify the islands?"
Exact transcripts of his radio messages reveal that Taylor was experiencing problems.
"Both my compasses are out and I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
I am over land, but it's broken.
I'm sure I'm in the Keys, but I don't know how far down
and I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale."
After flying without incident our plane runs into problems.
Amazingly, its at almost exactly the same time
as Taylor announced his instruments were malfunctioning - around 3.50.
The 'turn-and-slip' instrument in our Avenger starts to perform erratically,
making it harder for our pilot to make smooth and efficient turns.
"Let's turn and fly east 2 degrees.
We are going too damn far north instead of east.
If there is anything we wouldn't see it."
It was now 3 hours since they took off.
They had enough fuel for at least another 3 hours.
The crewmen started to argue
and, another Flight 19 pilot, Captain Edward Powers
tried to take control and turn them to the West.
"Dammit, if we would just head west we would get home!"
In our recreation of the flight,
the next hour passes smoothly
and Great Harbor Cay is safely in sight below.
Here flight 19 should have turned west and headed home.
But by now, Flight 19 could have been disoriented,
their fuel dangerously low and with darkness fast approaching
You didn't get far enough east.
How long have we been going east?
We're now heading 270 west.
Now, incredibly, another problem affects the recreation of Flight 19.
Our chase-plane pilot, flying alongside us to take film of the Avenger,
announces his aircraft's turn and slip indicator
- exactly the same instrument which became erratic on our plane
- is also malfunctioning.
It's completely frozen.
"Something really strange is going on here guys"
What is the problem?
And more importantly,
why is it happening?
Almost 2 hours into recreating Flight 19.
Two planes, two instrument failures.
Maybe the instruments of both our planes were already faulty?
Whatever the explanation, we make our final turn west
- a heading which could have saved the lives of Flight 19
- and head for Fort Lauderdale with a spooky feeling.
Flight 19 never made that final turn west.
The 5 planes were doomed to fly on,
with rapidly emptying gas tanks,
further and further to the east,
into the empty ocean and the growing darkness.
"We will head 270 until we hit the beach or run out of gas."
"When the first man gets down to 10 gallons of gas we will all land in the water together.
Does everyone understand that?"
"And that was the last that we heard on the radio.
He asked him how much gas he had left, he said about a half hour, 20 minutes.
We waited till that half hour went by,
and there was no more activity on the radio.
We knew they were down some place but we didn't know where.
So they sent out all the boats and all planes that they had available
to go look for them."
Navy rules dictate that all the planes in a formation should ditch together in such a crisis
Nobody knows what truly happened to the planes of Flight 19.
Why wasn't a single crewman, lifejacket
or piece of wreckage from five, 7- ton planes ever found?
Former naval pilot Dave White was part of the search team.
"I think frankly they got lost,
that the instructor took them the wrong way in spite of other students saying go west,
he didn't go far enough west.
No one knew for certain where Flight 19 ditched
and it was 8 hours before the main search could be mounted.
It must have seemed like an eternity to the crew's loved ones.
In that time the gulf stream current and surface winds
would have been able to move any wreckage more than 50 miles from their estimated crash position.
Finding a lone swimmer in those conditions would have been like finding a needle in a haystack.
"Well we searched, started about 5.30 in the morning, right after daylight,
and we found absolutely nothing."
Scores of ships and over 200 planes were deployed in the search for Flight 19.
At the time it was one of the largest search missions of its kind ever mounted.
What is it like to be the first pilot ever to refly that fateful tragic journey
- and get home safe?
Avenger pilot, Obie O'Brien.
"I could almost feel the presence of those 14 brave men that perished 60 years ago.
And it's a very sobering feeling."
The disappearance of Flight 19, and the media frenzy that ensued,
solidified the legend of the Bermuda triangle
and still remains its best known mystery.
But these five planes of 1945 were by no means the last to go missing.
In 1948 a DC3 took off from San Juan, Puerto Rico on December 27 bound for Miami.
It disappeared without trace.
In 1963, two huge KC135 aerial refueling military planes
crashed on a return flight to Homestead Air Base, near Miami, on August 28.
Flying 500 feet apart
they fell out of the sky simultaneously from around 36,000 feet.
But the 2 planes did not just disappear.
Wreckage was found -
but had the 2 planes collided?
Was it simple pilot error?
We will never know the exact truth.
Revealing how easily facts can become myth,
this flight, too, has passed in to the annals of Bermuda Triangle legends.
Leaving no stone unturned in our quest to unravel what lies behind the myth of the Bermuda Triangle,
we look at the likelihood of mechanical or pilot failures.
Could human error, and spatial disorientation
offer an answer to why some planes disappear?
Pilots flying over the ocean can easily lose their sense of position
and even confuse which is up and down, or left and right.
Humans are not designed for travelling at high speed in 3 dimensions above the ground.
Even on a clear day it's possible to become disorientated and confuse sea for sky.
Especially when light is reflecting from the ocean surface,
common in this part of the world.
In mist and fog the problem is even worse.
And if it is no longer clear which way is up and down
it would be easy to fly straight into the ocean.
One person who well knows the dangers of pilot disorientation
is Florida flying instructor Carol Collins.
She thinks the legend of the Bermuda Triangle could have a very simple explanation.
"On a day when it's more hazy,
you're going to have a much less distinct horizon.
If we look out this way we do still have a line of the horizon,
but you can see that it's not quite as clear as it was on the other side.
I'm going to put the plane into a bit of a bank.
And right now we're entering slowly into a climbing turn
and if you notice you're not really feeling anything.
I can very gradually get this airplane into a descent
and if I don't do a very rapid descent where your ears are starting to pop on you
you're never even going to know that you're in that descent."
Clearly, she isn't a believer.
In Collins' opinion, many of the aircraft accidents in the Bermuda Triangle
can be down to stress, being overtired or getting disoriented.
But what about the disappearances of ships?
Is it possible that human error could be at work?
Weather scientist Chris Landsea agrees
that there is an explanation for most incidents.
"Not as a scientist but as a resident
I would have to describe a lot of the problems
ascribed to the Bermuda Triangle as just human error.
There's a lot of people that do stupid things
and they get caught in a stupid area
and then they want to blame it on somebody else.
So I, knowing human nature and knowing how many idiots live in the area,
some of that's just gonna be bad judgment."
One organization has unique firsthand knowledge
about ships and boats getting into trouble in the Bermuda Triangle:
The US Coast Guard.
They're involved in rescues all over America's coastline.
Chief Petty Officer John Guthrie,
crew member of a Miami Station Coast Guard helicopter
and a proud member of the busiest sea rescue service in the world.
He knows exactly how easy it is to become disoriented.
"Sometimes you get a haze
and if it's a real calm day
you'll get the, the water looking like the sky and the sky looking like the water."
According to the US Coast Guard
in a review of aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the last 60 years,
there has been nothing to suggest that casualties were the result
of anything other than human error or mechanical failure.
On an average day the US Coastguard saves 11 lives
and assist more than 130 people in distress.
In recent years, a higher percentage of those needing help
have been safely rescued because of a new,
more accurate generation of a rescue device
called an EPIRB -
an Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon.
EPIRBs are credited with saving more than 14,000 lives worldwide
since being introduced in 1982.
In the Bermuda Triangle thousands of rescues are made every year
- and EPIRBS play a vital role in locating distressed vessels.
"they can take this with them in, into the water if their boat sinks and activate it,
and what this does it sends a signal to the satellites
which has a code for each individual four to six EPIRB.
Officially, the US coast Guard doesn't recognize the existence of the Bermuda Triangle.
But there are still cases where the Coast Guard has been unable to find a missing vessel
even when they have been carrying an EPIRB Beacon.
Most Bermuda Triangle disappearances are probably caused by freak weather,
human error or simple mechanical failure.
For some unlucky ones, it could be a combination of all these.
One bizarre story involved Miami-based property developer, Bruce Gernon.
Shortly after takeoff on a routine flight
- scheduled to take an hour from Andros Island in the Bahamas to Miami
Gernon claims to have noticed an innocent-looking lenticular cloud.
Normally seen surrounding mountains,
it hovered a few miles offshore over the Great Bahama Bank.
Gernon claims the anvil heads on the clouds formed into a tunnel,
with blue sky at the end of it.
As he flew into the cloud he noticed brilliant flashes of light
- but no actual forks of lightning.
It appeared as if the whole cloud was charged with energy.
He also claims that inside the tunnel strange lines appeared,
rotating very slowly anti-clockwise.
The lines ran the entire length of the tunnel -
which appeared to him at least 10 miles in length.
"And it should have taken over 3 minutes to reach the other end of the tunnel
but it only took about 20 seconds.
Gernon felt a sensation like zero gravity
and when he looked back
he could see contrails forming on the wing-tips.
He watched the tunnel slowly collapse into a slit.
Gernon believes electro-magnetic energy
can cause a unique 'electronic fog' around a plane. "
And that was the most mysterious part of this flight.
I wasn't flying through the fog,
I was flying with the fog.
It's a different kind of fog,
it has an electromagnetic energy within it."
Then, Gernon claims, the fog began to disperse in a few seconds
and he saw he was already over Miami.
When he looked at his watch he was amazed
he'd only been airborne for 33 minutes
- on a flight which should have taken over an hour.
Gernon's story of a weird electronic fog surrounding his plane in the Bermuda Triangle
is so bizarre it defies a simple physical explanation.
But there is another man attracted to the Triangle myth:
a self-styled amateur scientist researching what he claims to be a similar phenomenon.
In a makeshift laboratory in his Vancouver apartment,
John Hutchison claims to have practiced levitation and metal bending
using an electro-magnetic force he proudly calls
"The Hutchison Effect."
He believes he has witnessed the same mysterious electronic fog as Gernon.
Sometimes uncovering the bizarre
means meeting those seeking answers outside the box.
Hutchinson is to some, an eccentric dreamer,
but according to others, is a pioneer of science.
"My qualifications is,
is basically I just made it to grade eight,
I have, no qualifications er whatsoever.
The metallic mist that I created in my own research,
which resembles Bruce Gernon's special electronic fog
and I'm comparing my notes to metallic mist
and what I've seen this ball of metallic dense greyish white material appearing out of nowhere.
I know there's a correlation between the two of them"
Hutchinson says his story began in May 1980,
while experimenting with the equipment he had squeezed into his small apartment.
He says he noticed slight movements in objects near an electric field he was generating.
He tried moving objects into different areas of the field
before suddenly meeting with success
- making a 60 pound cannon ball levitate above the table's surface.
"With the early experiments I was doing
it captured a lot of interest from people
from all walks of the scientific community and that's the levitation,
the metal turning all kind of strange and mushy.
And people felt that there was a lot of applications for this technology that I'd discovered."
Hutchinson claims to levitate objects and warp metal,
using a combination of radio waves
and powerful million volt electro-magnetic fields.
Has he actually found a way to neutralize the force of gravity?
Truth is, nobody's taking him too seriously.
The established scientific community are not exactly beating a path to his door
to follow up his astonishing claims.
And there's another problem - it's Hutchinson's film,
so there's no way to check his claims.
Hutchinson says that the effects he has filmed
are powered by an incredible energy source.
He is vague on the details, but claims it's somehow related
to the so-far unproven, scientific theory of "Zero point Energy."
"A cubic foot of it can actually power the earth's energy needs for 100 years"
Scientists say even the concept of harnessing zero-point energy
is no more than completely theoretical.
Undeterred, Hutchison still believes he may have unlocked this hidden energy.
And he believes that inside the Bermuda Triangle such energy may occur naturally
and unleash effects similar to those he says he witnessed in his makeshift laboratory.
To Hutchinson, these 'zero point' forces could be powerful enough
to warp and flex aircraft bodies,
even split ships' hulls wide open.
Hutchinson believes that his amateur experiments could shed light
on the forces at play in the Bermuda Triangle
to date, they have not been verified or replicated.
No ship or plane wreck is known to exhibit the symptoms he describes.
His theories of unlocking energy by electro-magnetism
perpetuate the myth of the Bermuda Triangle
- but shed no light on the realities of the situation.
It's no more than coincidence,
but other Triangle theorists also link the forces of magnetism with the Bermuda Triangle legend.
The Earth is like a giant magnet, surrounded by the magnetosphere
- fields of magnetic force stretching from pole to pole.
One effect of that magnetic field is sometimes visible in the form of the Polar Lights,
known in the Northern Hemisphere as the aurora borealis.
The fluttering lights are driven by the sun's energy,
particles that are swept towards the poles by the Earth's magnetic field
colliding with our atmosphere.
It is that magnetic field that empowers a compass
- the most vital of all navigation tools, until global positioning satellites came along
Compasses points to the planet's magnetic North,
a location that is rarely aligned with the North Pole.
It's a fact that navigators have learned to compensate for.
It's long been known that there is one fact about the Bermuda Triangle,
which some have tried to suggest might cause navigation problems in the area.
It's one of several places on Earth where magnetic and true north
have actually lined-up with each other.
Another such region, off the coast of Japan
also has a somewhat mysterious reputation for lost ships.
But it's hard to imagine how this well-known alignment of the magnetic and true poles
could cause problems for any trained navigator.
And yet, we have learned of little-known evidence about the Earth's magnetic field.
A finding that the magnetosphere over the Bermuda Triangle
is changing more rapidly than anywhere else on the planet.
In this one respect,
it means that the Bermuda Triangle is unlike any other place on Earth.
And the evidence comes from¡. 500 miles out into space.
In 1999 a NASA rocket launched a tiny, 132 lbs satellite
built by scientists in Denmark.
Since then,
the Oersted Satellite has passed over the waters of the Bermuda Triangle more than 25,000 times,
measuring the strength of the Earth's magnetic field.
In the most exciting scientific development of this quest
Oersted project director Peter Stauning from Denmark,
reviews data recorded from above the Bermuda Triangle.
"We have observed that the main field
which we term the field coming from the earth's fluid core
has changed substantially in the Bermuda region during the past years."
The Danish satellite produces complex maps of the Earth's magnetic field
to build up a detailed picture of changes in the strength of the Earth's magnetism.
In the atmosphere¡.
At sea level¡.
And within the Earth's crust¡
From its vantage point in space,
the satellite gathers data to measure effects deep inside the heart of our planet.
The earth's core is probably solid iron,
but it's thought that the magnetosphere comes from the movement of a liquid outer core,
spinning like a giant dynamo to generate Earth's magnetic field..
Could this satellite data offer clues to unlock the secrets of the Bermuda Triangle?
A group of Danish scientists compare their data with similar readings
taken 20 years ago by the US Magsat satellite.
It was the first time they had looked specifically at the Bermuda Triangle region,
and it produced a dramatic result.
"Comparing the two magnetic fields
from the Magsat mission and the Oersted mission shows that in the Bermuda region
that the field has decreased by about 6% during 20 years."
The planet's magnetic field is weakening more rapidly
in the Bermuda Triangle region than anywhere else on Earth.
It's a fascinating finding,
but what could be causing such changes over the past two decades?
The ocean and air currents have changed little in centuries.
The earth's crust has taken millennia to form.
So, to the Danish scientists,
it seems likely that the cause of the magnetic field decrease
has to lie deeper - in the earth's fiery liquid-core.
They speculate that the magnetic changes could come from a violent turbulence¡
equivalent to a storm¡
deep in the molten-iron of the core¡
directly under the Bermuda Triangle.
So, could the recordings of magnetic field decreases
offer any sort of answer as to why the Bermuda Triangle
has earned itself such a fearsome reputation?
Triangle theorists ask:
If the magnetic field in the the Bermuda Triangle has changed so much,
could it be affecting navigation systems,
or weather patterns?
And, if there is a vast, swirling "storm"
buried deep in the molten rock below the Bermuda Triangle seabed,
could that, in some mysterious way,
affect sailors, and aviators..,
or their ships and their planes?
These seem unlikely scenarios.
Earth's magnetic field has varied greatly over millions of years,
and is still changing now.
It's hard to imagine how the slight extra rate of change in the Bermuda region
could in any way affect navigation,
ships and planes, or the people who crew them.
Despite such logic, questions continue to be posed
by those who would believe in the Triangle myth.
So having set out to try and solve the mystery of why myths surround the Bermuda Triangle,
It continues to raise more questions than answers.
In fact,
what have we uncovered so far in our search to find what lies behind
the myth of the Bermuda Triangle?
We've examined the tragic mystery of Flight 19
- probably caused by human error.
There have been a lot of ship and airplanes lost in the Bermuda Triangle
but there have been a lot of ships and airplanes lost in other areas of the world too."
"I really think there's something there.
But I don't have the answer"
We've heard of UFOs - an unlikely contender.
"After seeing what I saw that night
I believe there is something to the Bermuda triangle."
We've looked at whether ships that have sunk without trace
could have fallen victim to extreme weather
"I know that there is some severe weather out there."
¡or planes could have disappeared off the face of the map
as a result of the spatial disorientation of their pilots.
"A lot of it is simply due to pilot stress and fatigue."
We've heard one man's stories of time distortion and electronic fog.
And another's seemingly impossible claims of levitation and metal-bending electromagnetic forces
"A cubic foot of it
can actually power the Earth's energy needs for 100 years."
And, most intriguing of all,
the earth's magnetic field is weakening more rapidly
over the Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else on Earth.
But at the end of our journey,
no one reason satisfactorily accounts for the Triangle's strange reputation.
The Bermuda Triangle has held on to its secrets
- but perhaps that's just the way it should be
with one of the world's greatest mysteries.
www.mvgroup.org
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