Feature

Bermuda triangle-the mystery continues

Towsif Osman

The mystery of the Bermuda triangle, as most of us know it, has been talked over and over so many times that it itself is a mystery why the topic hasn't yet become redundant. Numerous books and research papers have been published which made futile attempts to solve the mystery. However, the articles carried no more weight than a feather and were heavily enmeshed in assumptions and suppositions. Often the witness records of the same incident would not match and many of the papers were proved partly or wholly wrong by other papers along the line of heavy research.

The Bermuda triangle, an area in the Atlantic enclosed by three points, Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been a constant source of mystery since the first documented disappearance in 1951. The name kept coming up in newspapers at intervals as "The Devil's Triangle", a place where many aircraft and ships have been lost. Later, in 1974 "The Devil's Triangle" was more popularised and brought to current fame by the book The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berlitz. In the book, the author recounted many incidents associated with the Bermuda triangle. One such incident is the infamous Flight 19. It was a team of five US Navy torpedo bombers that disappeared out of the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station on a training exercise. Neither the aircraft, nor its crew members were ever found. The book based the disappearances on various interesting theories like being transported by extraterrestrial technology or being sucked through holes in space-time.

However, many of Berlitz's accounts were put down by Kuche's The Bermuda Triangle MysterySolved. Kuche implied that there were a number of inconsistencies between Berlitz's account and actual eyewitness account. He asserted that the number of missing ships or aircraft were emphasized unnecessarily as the number is mostly consistent in any place which is as rough as the Atlantic. He also mentioned that the incident of Marie Celeste, which is famous for its mysterious disappearance, is in no way related to the Bermuda triangle.

Many such points and counterpoints exist to disprove the regular mis-beliefs, but the mystery remains unsolved. We can only assume some possible theories such as irregular magnetic field activity that disorients the vehicles' navigational instruments and causes them to lose their direction. But, so far we could not be sure of any one possible and probable reason.

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