1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,000 Tonight, it's the most notorious stretch of ocean on the planet. 2 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:15,000 Everyone knows about the Bermuda Triangle, but yet nobody knows what's going on over there. 3 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:21,000 A place where ships, planes, and unsuspecting travelers sometimes disappear. 4 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:26,000 An explosion or a freak wave or even just a crash would leave some debris behind. 5 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:28,000 So how come there isn't any? 6 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:34,000 Now, we explore the top theories surrounding this enduring mystery. 7 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:41,000 We have plenty of records of rogue waves outright destroying ocean-going vessels. 8 00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:46,000 We know that Bermuda is teaming with volcanic rock that makes compasses go crazy. 9 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:52,000 These planes are flying at 4,000 feet. I don't care if it's the perfect storm, no wave can do that. 10 00:00:52,000 --> 00:01:00,000 What could cause so many unexplained vanishings inside Bermuda's infamous triangle? 11 00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:18,000 1881, Liverpool, England. 12 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:23,000 A passenger ship named the Ellen Austin set sail for New York City. 13 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:31,000 The Ellen Austin, helmed by Captain A.J. Griffin, has a full manifest of immigrants excited to start a life in the New World. 14 00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:35,000 Back then, it was a long journey across the Atlantic, about six weeks time. 15 00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:40,000 Now, halfway in, the captain decides to alter their route to the south. 16 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:44,000 We can't say for sure why this is, but turns out to be a bad idea. 17 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:51,000 Soon after, the ship is becalmed, and without wind, it simply drifts. 18 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:57,000 A few days later, another boat appears, moving erratically. 19 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:03,000 No one can be seen aboard this ship, nor is there a name or a flag that identifies the vessel. 20 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:05,000 It appears to be abandoned. 21 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:11,000 The captain pulls his ship alongside the strange vessel, and some of the sailors cautiously board it. 22 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:15,000 What they find, or rather don't find, is very strange. 23 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:22,000 It's an empty ship. There's no logbook, there's no sign of violence, nothing to explain the missing sailors. 24 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:29,000 Stranger still, the valuable cargo, a hold of mahogany wood, is all still perfectly intact. 25 00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:35,000 Captain Griffin takes the schooner as salvage, and puts some of his best crewmen aboard. 26 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:40,000 The wind picks up, and these two ships now set sail together to New York. 27 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:45,000 But soon, they meet a turbulent storm that separates them. 28 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:50,000 When the weather clears, a few days later, Captain Griffin has to go searching for the other ship, 29 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:55,000 and when they finally spot it and pull up alongside, it's eerily quiet. 30 00:02:55,000 --> 00:03:00,000 Shockingly, the ship is empty. Again, none of the new crew members can be found. 31 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:04,000 There's no bloodshed, no damage from the storm, nothing. 32 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:07,000 It's as if they all just disappeared into thin air. 33 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:13,000 Once? Okay, that's a little bit weird, I'll give you that, but twice? Now it's getting scary. 34 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:19,000 Afraid to lose any more of his crew, Captain Griffin leaves the mysterious ship behind. 35 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:27,000 According to records we have from Lloyds of London, the Ellen Austin finishes its voyage alone, docking in New York on February 11th, 1881. 36 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:31,000 I cannot imagine what the surviving crew must have been thinking. 37 00:03:31,000 --> 00:03:36,000 Two crews on that boat, including some of their friends, just disappeared, seemingly into thin air. 38 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:44,000 What could explain the strange events witnessed by the crew of the Ellen Austin? 39 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:50,000 They don't know it at the time, but they've encountered this mysterious ship in an area of the Atlantic Ocean 40 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:59,000 that has been known to mariners for hundreds of years as a place to fear, a place they accidentally drifted into. 41 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:06,000 In this stretch of the ocean, there are countless stories of shipwrecks and lost boats. 42 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:13,000 In 1800, the USS Pickering disappears en route to Delaware, carrying 90 people. 43 00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:20,000 In 1814, the USS Wasp vanishes, along with 140 passengers. 44 00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:28,000 And in 1921, the Carroll A. Deering is lost and ultimately found abandoned near North Carolina. 45 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:36,000 But the actual location where the vessels go missing isn't defined until 1964. 46 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:45,000 Journalist Vincent Gattis catalogs some of the strange goings on in an article, and he finally comes up with a name for this mysterious area. 47 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:50,000 He calls it the Bermuda Triangle. 48 00:04:50,000 --> 00:04:57,000 The Bermuda Triangle covers about 500,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. 49 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:00,000 It has claimed numerous victims. 50 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:07,000 As recently as 2015, two boys disappeared in the Triangle during a fishing trip that left out of Tequesta, Florida. 51 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:14,000 As the losses have piled up, the area has become infamous, legendary worldwide even. 52 00:05:14,000 --> 00:05:20,000 Everyone knows about the Bermuda Triangle, but yet nobody knows what's going on over there. 53 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:28,000 There have been a number of different theories. One of the earliest comes from Christopher Columbus. 54 00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:38,000 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. 55 00:05:38,000 --> 00:05:46,000 The Santa Maria and her sister ships get stuck in an abundance of algae, which, in Columbus's diary, he refers to as weeds. 56 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:51,000 The ships are stuck for three days, and the sailors become paranoid and panicked. 57 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:56,000 They fear running aground or being tangled in the weeds and being dragged to the ocean floor. 58 00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:06,000 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. 59 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:17,000 What Columbus and his men call weeds, scientists eventually name sargassum, from the Spanish word sargazo, meaning seaweed. 60 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:22,000 The area ultimately becomes known as the Sargasso Sea. 61 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:27,000 The Sargasso Sea measures about 700 miles wide and 2,000 miles long. 62 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:34,000 It takes up about two-thirds of the Bermuda Triangle and is full of these dense mats of sargassum. 63 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:38,000 Could seaweed explain the loss of so many vessels? 64 00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:49,000 Sargasso is a seaweed. It's made of long, thin stalks, and then there are lots of leaves and air-filled sacks called pneumaticis. 65 00:06:49,000 --> 00:06:57,000 If you get stuck in it, the sargasso wraps around the rudder so you can't steer, and barnacles begin to grow on the ship, slowing it down. 66 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:02,000 But getting stuck is just one small part of the problem. 67 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:08,000 When sargassum groups together and begins to rot, as it decomposes, it produces hydrogen-sulfide gas. 68 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:13,000 This gas smells really awful, like rotten eggs and it's toxic. 69 00:07:13,000 --> 00:07:19,000 If you breathe in this hydrogen-sulfide, it can irritate your eyes, your nose, and your throat, 70 00:07:19,000 --> 00:07:26,000 but it can also cause some serious psychological issues if inhaled for an extended period of time, possibly even insanity. 71 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:32,000 A recent study in Nanchang, China in 2021 tested the effects of hydrogen-sulfide on rodents, 72 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:37,000 and they concluded, without a doubt, that it causes depression-like behavior. 73 00:07:37,000 --> 00:07:44,000 Obviously, just getting tangled in the seaweed could explain a disappearing or erect ship if it's stuck out there for long enough. 74 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:52,000 But when you take into account this psychological effect, this might explain the wilder Bermuda Triangle stories. 75 00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:04,000 Could this deadly gas explain the experience of ships like the Ellen Austin? 76 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:08,000 Remember, the mysterious ship that they find doesn't wreck or disappear. 77 00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:16,000 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? 78 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:18,000 It's possible. 79 00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:23,000 An eerily similar incident appears to take place in 1968. 80 00:08:23,000 --> 00:08:27,000 But this time, there's more evidence. 81 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:36,000 On October 31, 1968, British businessman and amateur sailor, Donald Crowhurst, sets off on the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. 82 00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:42,000 It's a competition to be the first man to single-handedly, non-stop sail around the world. 83 00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:46,000 Unfortunately, he's ill-prepared, and his boat has been hastily constructed. 84 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:51,000 He barely makes it out to sea when he starts encountering problems with navigation and leaks. 85 00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:58,000 But if he goes back home, he'll lose everything he's invested in this race and be a laughingstock. He'll be humiliated. 86 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:04,000 Instead, Crowhurst devises a plan. To cheat. 87 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:10,000 He decides to stay in the Atlantic and radio back false coordinates to make it seem as though he's traversing the globe. 88 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:19,000 Eventually, race organizers catch on that Crowhurst radio communications are not coming from the coordinates he's giving, so Crowhurst goes silent. 89 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:28,000 Sometime thereafter, he makes the mistake of drifting into the Bermuda Triangle. And that's it. He's never seen or heard from again. 90 00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:35,000 Crowhurst's empty boat is eventually found in the Atlantic, along with a logbook. 91 00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:42,000 The writings paint a clear picture of a descent into madness. They start off perfectly normal, but once he hits the Sargasso Sea, 92 00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:48,000 Crowhurst starts writing mathematical formulas that he claims represent a universal truth. 93 00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:58,000 He disputes Einstein's theory of relativity and his magnum opus, a rambling 25,000 word meditation on free will, perception, and the nature of God. 94 00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:09,000 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. 95 00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:19,000 This is someone who is experiencing some sort of mental instability, which may have led to his suicide. But was this due to prolonged exposure to rotting Sargasum? 96 00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:28,000 Let's just assume that Sargasum is to blame for the Ellen Austin and the Crowhurst incidents along with other entanglements and shipwrecks. 97 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:33,000 The problem is this doesn't solve all the mysteries of what's been going on here. 98 00:10:33,000 --> 00:10:45,000 While the Sargasso Sea is pretty sizable, it only takes up part of the Bermuda Triangle. There are many incidents on ships that didn't come anywhere close to the seaweed. 99 00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:50,000 So we know for sure that it's not the whole answer. There must be something else going on. 100 00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:59,000 From the time of Christopher Columbus, the dangers of the Bermuda Triangle are ascribed to deadly seaweed. 101 00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:05,000 It's an interesting idea, but because seaweed only covers part of the triangle, it can't explain everything. 102 00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:09,000 Could another sailor's tale offer a different explanation? 103 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:15,000 It starts off as something of a legend among weather-hardened sea-weary sailors. 104 00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:27,000 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. 105 00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:35,000 And for most of the 500 or so year history of transatlantic shipping, these have been thought to be myths or exaggerations. 106 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:47,000 Then, in the 19th century, French explorer Jules Dumont-Derville reports seeing 100-foot waves in a different body of water, the Indian Ocean. 107 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:50,000 However, no one believes him. 108 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:58,000 During that time, the models that oceanographers use to predict wave height say that these random giant waves are an impossibility. 109 00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:03,000 But a recent discovery shows, Derville might have been right. 110 00:12:03,000 --> 00:12:10,000 These phenomena have been observed, measured, and proven, and we call them rogue waves. 111 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:17,000 The proof comes on New Year's Day, 1995. 112 00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:23,000 About 100 miles off the coast of Norway, there's an oil drilling platform called the Dropner. 113 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:31,000 In addition to its main equipment, it contains a whole slew of instruments that can monitor wave height, slope, acceleration, etc. 114 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:43,000 On January 1st of 1995, a laser rangefinder on the bottom of this oil drilling platform measures a wave headed for the Dropner. 115 00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:49,000 The Dropner wave, as it becomes known, seems to come out of nowhere and measures 85 feet high. 116 00:12:49,000 --> 00:12:53,000 It has characteristics that don't fit any previous wave model. 117 00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:20,000 These rogue waves, because they are so gigantic, so tall, so steep, and moving so quickly, 118 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:26,000 they can carry up to 16 times the amount of force than a regular wave. 119 00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:34,000 And in fact, the bigger the ship, the worse you fare when it comes to rogue waves. 120 00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:37,000 Because these rogue waves, they don't come on slowly. 121 00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:40,000 They're not giant, wide things. 122 00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:44,000 They're very sharp. They're like cliffs of water. 123 00:13:44,000 --> 00:13:50,000 And so when a ship encounters a rogue wave, it gets sent straight up the side of the cliff. 124 00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:56,000 And then when it reaches the top, it teeters over and slams back down into the water. 125 00:13:56,000 --> 00:14:02,000 And the bigger the ship you have, the more force there is and the more damage that rogue wave can do. 126 00:14:02,000 --> 00:14:09,000 That kind of massive force grossly exceeds the limit of what ocean vessels today can tolerate. 127 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:13,000 So you can only imagine what it would do to a wooden ship from hundreds of years ago. 128 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:17,000 It would decimate it in one fell swoop. 129 00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:21,000 But scientists still aren't certain what causes them. 130 00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:25,000 One idea is that they're caused by constructive interference. 131 00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:30,000 This is when different waves travel different speeds and start to pile up on each other. 132 00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:37,000 Now constructive interference can occur when huge storms converge from multiple directions at once. 133 00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:41,000 The Bermuda Triangle is well known for such storms. 134 00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:47,000 The triangle is right in the middle of Hurricane Alley, where storms from the north and the south can come together. 135 00:14:47,000 --> 00:14:50,000 If there's a third storm that comes in from Florida, forget about it. 136 00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:54,000 You've got the recipe for a deadly rogue wave. 137 00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:59,000 This phenomenon might explain a series of mysterious shipwrecks. 138 00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:04,000 One ship that may have been impacted by these rogue waves is the USS Cyclops. 139 00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:12,000 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. 140 00:15:12,000 --> 00:15:22,000 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. 141 00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:30,000 After nine days at sea, the Cyclops sends a message that reads, quote, weather fair all well. 142 00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:33,000 This is the last message it ever sent. 143 00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:38,000 Every ship just seems to vanish, along with its crew, without even an SOS. 144 00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:41,000 It's an absolute heartbreaking catastrophe. 145 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:49,000 To this day, aside from active combat, the USS Cyclops was the largest loss of life to the Navy. 146 00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:55,000 In 1941, two more Navy ships meet a similar fate. 147 00:15:55,000 --> 00:16:03,000 The USS Proteus, decommissioned after World War I, departs the Virgin Islands with 58 crew members and a cargo of Bauxite. 148 00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:05,000 It never reaches its destination. 149 00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:10,000 A month later, the USS Nereus leaves from the same place with the same type of cargo. 150 00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:13,000 Sadly, it suffers the same tragedy. 151 00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:17,000 The ship and the 61 people aboard are never seen again. 152 00:16:17,000 --> 00:16:26,000 Both the Proteus and the Nereus are sister ships to the Cyclops, all three massive, strongly fortified vessels all gone. 153 00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:31,000 How can an enormous ship just go, pfft, and just disappear? 154 00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:37,000 Even if you destroy a big ship, there's going to be lots of bits and pieces floating around. 155 00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:42,000 It is very odd for a giant ship to go missing without a trace. 156 00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:44,000 But in these cases, there's nothing. 157 00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:48,000 These certainly sound like candidates for rogue wave disasters. 158 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:55,000 In 2018, oceanographer Simon Boxall attempts to prove this theory. 159 00:16:55,000 --> 00:17:05,000 But the University of Southampton, Oxl, conducts an experiment to investigate if rogue waves could destroy modern ocean-going vessels. 160 00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:13,000 And specifically, Dr. Boxall was trying to explore whether the USS Cyclops was destroyed by a rogue wave. 161 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:19,000 And we can't recreate that exact scenario, so instead he built a scale model. 162 00:17:19,000 --> 00:17:25,000 And once the simulators are turned on, enormous waves rise up and easily destroy the model. 163 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:30,000 Boxall's study demonstrates just how powerful these waves are. 164 00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:31,000 They come out of nowhere. 165 00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:33,000 You don't have a warning. 166 00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:39,000 You may not even have time to send a distress signal before you're simply consumed by it. 167 00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:44,000 For some, this experiment solves a long-standing mystery. 168 00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:51,000 We've actually proven the existence of rogue waves, and we've proven that they can happen all over the Bermuda Triangle. 169 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:57,000 Some people would say that, yeah, rogue waves are likely responsible for the disappearance of the USS Cyclops, 170 00:17:57,000 --> 00:18:01,000 as well as a number of other ships in the Bermuda Triangle. 171 00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:04,000 And for the non-REC boats that have turned up with their crew missing, 172 00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:09,000 perhaps a small rogue wave could have tipped the boat and everybody fell overboard. 173 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:13,000 But this still doesn't explain every incident. 174 00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:21,000 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, 175 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:28,000 I might have a difficult time arguing with you, but ships aren't the only things that have disappeared here. 176 00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,000 What about all the airplanes? 177 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:39,000 For centuries, ships have gone missing in the notorious Bermuda Triangle. 178 00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:46,000 But after airplanes are invented in 1903, some follow the same mysterious fate. 179 00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:52,000 Perhaps the most famous incident occurs on December 5, 1945. 180 00:18:52,000 --> 00:19:00,000 Around 2 p.m., five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers, collectively known as Flight 19, 181 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:05,000 take off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida on a routine training flight. 182 00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:09,000 The 14 men on these planes are extremely competent soldiers. 183 00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:12,000 They've logged over 300 hours in the air. They know what they're doing. 184 00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:20,000 And the flight's leader, Lieutenant Charles Taylor, is an incredibly experienced pilot who successfully flew numerous combat missions in World War II. 185 00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:25,000 So we're talking about the best of the best. These are top gun type of guys. 186 00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:29,000 The exercise begins normally. Everything starts smoothly. 187 00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:34,000 But soon after entering the Bermuda Triangle, something strange happens. 188 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:40,000 Lieutenant Taylor radios that his plane's compass is malfunctioning, and he believes that they're flying in the wrong direction. 189 00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:48,000 But they're not. Something has caused the airmen, or their equipment, to become mysteriously disoriented. 190 00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:53,000 The situation worsens when a heavy storm rolls in. 191 00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:58,000 At this point, the pilots are very confused. They believe they've drifted hundreds of miles off course. 192 00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:00,000 Somewhere near the Florida Keys. 193 00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:06,000 As they get farther and farther away, their radio communications become increasingly faint. 194 00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:10,000 And after hours of flying, they're running out of fuel. 195 00:20:10,000 --> 00:20:17,000 Their last recorded communications discuss having to ditch the planes when they get below 10 gallons of fuel. 196 00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:23,000 From that point on, their transmission cuts out. And the only thing the naval base hears is an eerie buzz. 197 00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:29,000 It's the last time any of these men are seen or heard from. 198 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:37,000 Despite their high level skills and some of the day's most technologically advanced aircraft, all five planes and 14 crew members are lost. 199 00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:41,000 The tragedy doesn't end there. 200 00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:46,000 The Navy immediately releases two large sea planes to hunt for Flight 19. 201 00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:53,000 After 27 minutes, one of those sea planes radios back that they're approaching Flight 19's last location. 202 00:20:53,000 --> 00:21:02,000 But then this rescue plane is never heard from again. It vanishes off the radar. The blip just disappears. 203 00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:07,000 Shockingly, the remains of that plane and its 13 crewmen are never recovered either. 204 00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:13,000 The other plane keeps looking but finds nothing and ends up just returning to the base. 205 00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:19,000 No bodies, no debris, no sign at all of these aircraft even ever existed. 206 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:24,000 Six planes and 27 men are gone. It's like they just vanished off the face of the Earth. 207 00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:34,000 Now all of a sudden, the Sargasum and Rogue Wave theories, though they are scientifically credible, they seem a lot less likely as the root cause of the Triangle's problems. 208 00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:42,000 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. 209 00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:50,000 People have studied Flight 19 for almost 80 years now and nobody believes that they were brought down by waves or seaweed. 210 00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:58,000 Then in 2015, Russian scientist Igor Yeltsof offers a possible explanation. 211 00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:11,000 While working at the Trophemic Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics, Yeltsof proposes that the Bermuda Triangle's dangers are caused by an undersea buildup and subsequent explosion of methane gas. 212 00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:23,000 Methane itself is a colorless, odorless gas you might be familiar with methane as natural gas to heat your home. 213 00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:34,000 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. 214 00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:41,000 If the seafloor cracks or that ice gets pushed up to touch the water, an exceptional amount of gas can be released. 215 00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:46,000 You ever drop dry ice into water like for Halloween, you know, so you can make that fake fog? 216 00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:53,000 Now imagine all that happened in the span of an instant with all that gas trapped in a bubble underwater. 217 00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:59,000 The gas heats up the surrounding water and surges quickly to the surface. 218 00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:08,000 Methane is highly flammable, so the intense heat from the plane's exhaust could cause a massive explosion, enough to blow the plane to smithereens. 219 00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:13,000 Could this also explain what happened to the missing rescue plane? 220 00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:23,000 The night of the Flight 19 incident, a tanker ship, the SS Gaines Mills, reports seeing flames from an apparent explosion billowing 100 feet high. 221 00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:31,000 Maybe the search and rescue seaplane flies through the same patch of methane gas, their engine exhaust ignites the methane and destroys the plane. 222 00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:35,000 But let's say the plane doesn't explode and the pilot manages to keep it aloft. 223 00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:41,000 If an airplane were to hit this gas bubble, there's a few possible things that could go wrong. 224 00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:47,000 For example, if a plane suddenly flies into a patch of methane gas, a pilot would quickly lose control. 225 00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:58,000 His wings, his engines, his instruments are all calibrated to create loft in air, not in methane, which has a totally different density, so the plane would just drop. 226 00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:06,000 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. 227 00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:17,000 This can cause mood changes, slurred speech, vision problems, memory loss, and most notably, disorientation. 228 00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:31,000 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. 229 00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:41,000 In 2016, one year after Yeltsof publishes his theory, another team looks for further evidence to support it. 230 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:48,000 Researchers at Arctic University in Norway study multiple giant craters on the floor of the Barrensea. 231 00:24:48,000 --> 00:25:00,000 These massive craters on the sea floor were created thousands of years ago, and the best explanation for them is exploding methane deposits. 232 00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:09,000 And these same craters are present in the Bermuda Triangle, so these methane gas explosions have almost certainly happened there. 233 00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:15,000 If true, this story could also explain the Triangles lost ships. 234 00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:21,000 When the gas explodes underwater, it creates this giant sinkhole at the surface. 235 00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:33,000 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. 236 00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:42,000 Just like in an airplane, methane offsets the oxygen which we need to breathe so it can easily confuse sailors that are in the ocean around it. 237 00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:52,000 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. 238 00:25:53,000 --> 00:26:04,000 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. 239 00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:15,000 But in 2019, a shocking new theory emerges thanks to a scientist who experienced a surprising event in the area. 240 00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:24,000 One of the top investigators studying shipwrecks in the Bermuda Triangle is Dr. Philippe Roushia. 241 00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:31,000 He's the custodian of historic wrecks at Bermuda's Department of the Environment and Natural Resources. 242 00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:39,000 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. 243 00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:45,000 So far, Roushia has managed to defy the odds, despite some unusual incidents. 244 00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:52,000 When he was out diving in the early 2000s, he encountered a strange phenomenon. None of his compasses were actually working. 245 00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:59,000 He had multiple compasses on his dive gear and his boat, and they were all pointing in different ways, none of which were accurate. 246 00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:05,000 And because he's a lifelong local and conditions were clear, he was able to find his way back to Bermuda by sight. 247 00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:14,000 Roushia has since discovered several more of what he calls hotspots in the Triangle, places that make navigational tools useless. 248 00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:21,000 Clearly, this could be the reason why some of the wrecks, both planes and boats, could have happened in the area. 249 00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:23,000 But why is it happening? 250 00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:28,000 After hearing many stories like Roushia's, scientists investigated. 251 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:36,000 In a 2019 study published in Nature, they might have found the cause, and it has to do with the makeup of Bermuda itself. 252 00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:43,000 Bermuda is a volcanic island, like Hawaii and many others, but researchers have discovered that Bermuda has one major difference. 253 00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:52,000 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. 254 00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:56,000 That's immensely deeper and obviously much closer to the Earth's core. 255 00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:59,000 This is entirely unique to Bermuda. 256 00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:04,000 This geologic feature turns out to have surprising consequences. 257 00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:13,000 Because this volcanic rock in and around Bermuda originated so deep within the Earth, it has a heavy concentration of a mineral called magnetite. 258 00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:19,000 In fact, Bermuda is 18 to 20 percent magnetite, nearly 20 times more than typical soil. 259 00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:24,000 Magnetite is the most magnetic, naturally occurring mineral on the planet. 260 00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:29,000 And this is what could be making so many ships and airplanes go haywire in the triangle. 261 00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:39,000 In other words, Bermuda is basically a giant magnet. 262 00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:42,000 This phenomenon can be pretty easily demonstrated. 263 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:49,000 If you pass a compass over a small amount of Bermuda's magnetite-rich limestone, it can throw it off by several degrees. 264 00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,000 And that's just one little rock. 265 00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:56,000 There's 500 billion tons of this stuff in the Bermuda triangle. 266 00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:58,000 So just imagine what that could do. 267 00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:03,000 Without a trustworthy compass, ships could easily veer off course and crash into the rocks. 268 00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:05,000 But what about planes? 269 00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:10,000 Planes would have problems with not only their compass, but also their altimeter readings. 270 00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:14,000 A pilot could get quite disoriented and potentially make a fatal mistake. 271 00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:23,000 According to one pilot, magnetite could also be powerful enough to generate a literal cloud of magnetism. 272 00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:29,000 In 2017, Bruce Gernon publishes a book called Beyond the Bermuda Triangle. 273 00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:35,000 In it, he recounts many pilot stories saying they've been in this electronic fog. 274 00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:43,000 Until the modern advent of GPS navigation, the compass is the tool that enables travelers to accurately navigate the globe. 275 00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:48,000 It does this by always pointing in a constant direction, magnetic north. 276 00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:53,000 It can, however, be instantly rendered inaccurate by the presence of a strong magnet. 277 00:29:53,000 --> 00:30:00,000 According to Gernon, electronic fog is like a grayish cloud of electromagnetic fields that form above the ocean. 278 00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:04,000 It can appear out of nowhere and completely engulf an aircraft. 279 00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:10,000 Gernon himself says he experiences this phenomenon while flying through the heart of the Bermuda Triangle. 280 00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:15,000 His airplane is suddenly surrounded by a strange fog that he can't break through. 281 00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:23,000 It seems to stick to his plane and he experiences the sensation of zero gravity as it propels his aircraft forward. 282 00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:29,000 According to Gernon, once he's out of the triangle, the cloud disintegrates. 283 00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:38,000 When his instruments work again, he realizes that he just traveled 100 miles in only 3 minutes and 20 seconds. 284 00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:41,000 He landed 30 minutes ahead of time. 285 00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:44,000 The fog practically teleported him. 286 00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:54,000 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. 287 00:30:54,000 --> 00:31:05,000 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. 288 00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:12,000 It's kind of like a magical carpet ride where if you're lucky, it'll send you in the direction that you want to go. 289 00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:15,000 But if you're unlucky, it might send you into a watery grave. 290 00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:22,000 Despite Gernon's claims, mainstream science has yet to support the existence of electronic fog. 291 00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:26,000 Gernon himself isn't a scientist. 292 00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:30,000 He's an accomplished pilot and flight instructor, but not a physicist. 293 00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:36,000 And based on a lot of his experience flying through the triangle, this is what he personally believes. 294 00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:45,000 Now Gernon claims to have worked with numerous scientists who all believe that this phenomenon is plausible and maybe to him it is. 295 00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:56,000 But until we have some hard data or visual evidence like a video recording, I think it's too early to blame the electronic fog for disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. 296 00:31:56,000 --> 00:32:06,000 Meanwhile, the magnetized around Bermuda is proven and we're still only beginning to uncover all the strange effects it might be causing. 297 00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:32,000 In 2014's Malaysia Flight 370, one of the most mysterious plane crashes of all time. 298 00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:37,000 We still don't know where it crashed, but a bunch of wreckage eventually washed up. 299 00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:43,000 However, with the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, it's a different story. 300 00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:49,000 These things just disappear like they never existed, not even a trace of an airframe or an anchor chain. 301 00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:58,000 For a number of these disappearances, such as Flight 19 or the USS Cyclops, massive search efforts are undertaken, yet nothing is ever found. 302 00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:06,000 But logically, an explosion or a freak wave or even just a crash would leave some debris behind. So how come there isn't any? 303 00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:17,000 In 2014, physics and meteorology professor David Pears suggests a surprising new answer to that question. 304 00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:23,000 He thinks that some of these vessels were never found because they were transported out of the Bermuda Triangle and into another place. 305 00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:31,000 Not by magic, but a scientific phenomenon that he calls a space war, but you might know as a wormhole. 306 00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:46,000 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. 307 00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:52,000 Wormholes are strictly theoretical at this time. They've only been proven to be mathematically possible on paper. 308 00:33:52,000 --> 00:34:00,000 They were discovered in 1935 by physicists Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, which is why they're also called Einstein-Rosenbridges. 309 00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:09,000 And these are based on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which tells us that space and time are interwoven. 310 00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:16,000 We actually live in a four-dimensional universe, three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. 311 00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:22,000 Is it possible that a wormhole could exist in the Bermuda Triangle? 312 00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:30,000 If you take a look back at Christopher Columbus's accounts traveling through the Bermuda Triangle, he mentioned something incredibly strange. 313 00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:35,000 He reports seeing a great flame of fire crashing into the sea one night. 314 00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:41,000 Afterwards, he sees strange lights in the distance and his compass readings are erratic. 315 00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:53,000 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. 316 00:34:53,000 --> 00:35:03,000 Today, many institutions and top physicists are delving into the complex science behind possible wormholes. 317 00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:13,000 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. 318 00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:25,000 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. 319 00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:32,000 Now, we don't know how to scale wormholes up to fit a giant ship or aircraft, but anything can happen. 320 00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:49,000 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. 321 00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:56,000 And when you start thinking about that possibility, there are some stories from the Bermuda Triangle that perfectly fit that description. 322 00:35:57,000 --> 00:36:02,000 Including one that takes place on June 7th, 1964. 323 00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:15,000 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. 324 00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:25,000 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. 325 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:36,000 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. 326 00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:43,000 The tower assures Cascio that she is at the right place and clears her to land at any time. 327 00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:53,000 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. 328 00:36:53,000 --> 00:37:04,000 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. 329 00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:14,000 Wormhole enthusiasts believe that this has proved that she actually traveled back in time, to a time before Grand Turk Island was developed. 330 00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:30,000 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. 331 00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:37,000 Obviously, if we could prove the existence of wormholes, that would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. 332 00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:45,000 But, until that day comes, researchers are going to have to stick to the science they know to solve the Bermuda Triangle mystery. 333 00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:17,000 Okay, so then how about the rogue waves? They certainly happen in the triangle, but like Sargassum, they don't explain the disappearance of airplanes. 334 00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:24,000 Well then how about a methane gas explosion? Maybe, but you'd think that a large explosion would leave debris behind. 335 00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:34,000 What about magnetite, wormholes, or even electromagnetic fog? Honestly, any one of these could be attributed to the disappearances within the triangle. 336 00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:39,000 Or perhaps, could all these theories be true? 337 00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:56,000 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. 338 00:38:56,000 --> 00:39:00,000 There's a combination of deadly factors that are existing here. 339 00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:13,000 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. 340 00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:20,000 Other ships have almost certainly been hit with rogue waves. We now know that they've been scientifically proven to exist. 341 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:29,000 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. 342 00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:38,000 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. 343 00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:42,000 There also may be a simple explanation for why no wreckage is found. 344 00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:48,000 Within the Bermuda Triangle is an undersea trench called the Milwaukee Deep. 345 00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:53,000 This is the deepest spot within the Atlantic, over 27,000 feet down. 346 00:39:53,000 --> 00:40:02,000 The Milwaukee Deep is relatively unexplored. There have only been a couple expeditions to those depths in that location throughout all of history. 347 00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:08,000 If your ship ends up sinking this deep, it's really unlikely anyone's going to be able to spot it. 348 00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:12,000 What about the vessels that aren't destroyed? 349 00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:19,000 Not every anomaly in the Bermuda Triangle involves destruction. Sometimes vessels just get hopelessly lost. 350 00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:25,000 We know that Bermuda is teaming with volcanic rock called magnetite that makes compasses go crazy. 351 00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:34,000 There are even warnings on British Admiralty charts near Bermuda, cautioning sailors that their compasses may be off by as much as 14 degrees. 352 00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:38,000 I think the magnetic anomalies are the most likely culprit for the region's plane crashes as well. 353 00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:44,000 While they used to be more common, we've seen very few casualties since the advent of GPS navigation. 354 00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:53,000 One day we may finally get some substantial evidence or capture a video of a destructive rogue wave or of the mysterious electronic fog. 355 00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:58,000 Or, I don't know, maybe a wormhole open up right over Bermuda for the whole world to see. 356 00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:05,000 But until then, I think it's best not to limit our minds to what the Bermuda Triangle could or couldn't be. 357 00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:08,000 Because there could be a new scientific explanation next year. 358 00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:15,000 The possibilities are endless. And that's what's kept people fascinated by the Bermuda Triangle for so long. 359 00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:27,000 In 2022, a particularly tragic discovery was made in the Bermuda Triangle by an underwater film crew. 360 00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:34,000 Not the wreckage of a plane or boat, but of the destroyed 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger. 361 00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:40,000 Another unexpected moment in the long saga of this mysterious area. 362 00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:46,000 I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.