Here's an interesting article in "How Stuff Works" I encountered while looking at Digg.com, my main source for offbeat information that deepens my appreciation for the world and the mysteries and anomalies it still offers for speculation.
In this article, entitled "How the Bermuda Triangle Works," Lee Ann Obringer of the article discusses notable disappearances, addresses the specifics, recounts some legends, and provides some plausible explanations. I was most interested in the information that methane gas eruptions have caused oil rigs to sink and may be responsible for some of the disappearances in the Bermuda triangle:
[quote begins]
It's possible that these methane concentrations exist over portions of the seabed within the Bermuda Triangle, although some question how much is actually there. Landslides that often occur along the North American continental shelf to the north of the Bermuda Triangle could bring down boulders and debris, rupturing the layer of gas hydrate beneath the sea floor and freeing the trapped gas.
Within seconds of a methane gas pocket rupturing, the gas surges up and erupts on the surface without warning. If a ship is in the area of the blowout, the water beneath it would suddenly become much less dense. The vessel could sink and sediment could quickly cover it as it settles onto the sea floor. Even planes flying overhead could catch fire during such a blowout. Although he doesn't agree with the methane hydrate theory as an explanation for the Bermuda Triangle, Bill Dillon, a research geologist with the United States Geological Survey said that, "On several occasions, oil drilling rigs have sunk as the result of [methane] gas escape."
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It just never occurred to me that ships could sink due to the water underneath them becoming less dense. Somehow it is a disconcerting thought.
This methane gas wants thinking about. Not only can it sink an oil rig and maybe a ship or plane, but it also causes "spontaneous combustion" in humans, contributes to global warming, and has been blamed for some of the strange phenomena at places such as Brown Mountain, North Carolina. I assume that swamp gas = methane gas (no?).
Now it turns out that scientists who have studied the Brown Mountain lights for the last 15 years have concluded that the lights are "caused by natural plasmas produced by special geologic and atmospheric conditions of the mountain." As in....ectoplasm? Okay, just kidding there; it's actually all to do with electricity. This note provides a fuller explanation, though it's really hard for me to get past the name of the organization that conducted the study: The League of Energy Materialization and Unexplained Phenomena Research. A ghost hunting friend would say that LEMUR'S conclusions are completely consistent with the presence of ghosts.
Once I was driving through the North Carolina mountains with my first husband. it was late at night, we were both pretty tired, and it seemed as if we had been on the road for about a million years. We were in one of the areas where there was no development, no houses, no nothing, and we were both pretty cranky.
I was in the passenger seat and nearly asleep. A sphere of bright white light suddenly flew up from the right side of the road, arced over the road directly in front of us and disappeared on the other side. It took me a minute or so to process it; then both of us turned at the same time and said in unison, "Did you see that?" We were nowhere near Brown Mountain at the time. I've always assumed that there was an explanation for it and perhaps this is it:
[quote from Wikipedia note begins]
[C]onducive and non-conducive layers of the mountain (such as magnetite and quartz) store electric charge when water runs through tunnels in the ridge. At night, when the rocks cool and contract, these layers squeeze together, causing massive discharges. Sometimes multiple discharges intersect and spin fast enough to be observed in the visible magnetic spectrum, causing the illusion of a self-contained sphere of light at the point of intersection.
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So I'm glad we finally cleared that up.
Anyway, an excellent article on the Bermuda Triangle, well worth a look if like I did you grew up when the legends were really garnering some serious attention in the media for awhile.
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