(NewsNation) — A scientist believes he may have solved the infamous mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, which has been the site of supernatural speculation, plane crashes and shipwrecks for decades.
An oceanographer from the University of Southampton, Dr Simon Boxall, discovered that the region in the Atlantic Ocean has rogue waves, which are a natural ocean phenomenon where waves can form around 100 feet high, coming from all angles, and are powerful enough to break a ship in half.
“Rogue waves occur around the globe, but there are certain areas of the globe where rogue waves are more common. … The Bermuda Triangle was only created as a concept by someone called George X Sand in 1952; prior to that, there was no real mystery,” Boxall told NewsNation.
He explained rogue waves come to exist when two storm systems coming together. Another factor, he says, relates to weight of numbers.
Boxall said 33% of all privately owned boats within the United Sates reside within the Bermuda Triangle, and a 2019 U.S. Coast Guard report showed 82% of all incidents at sea occurred because people had no training or safety equipment.
“If you take a third of the population and you put them into that triangle area, it’s not surprising that boats sometimes go … missing.”
To test the theory, Boxall and his team ran a simulation to recreate the USS Cyclops, an American carrier ship that sank in the region in 1918 and took 309 lives.