What's Really Going on At the Bottom of the Bermuda Triangle?

The legend of the Bermuda Triangle. It's one of the few mysteries we still can't solve. Let's rewind back about 600 years. The story begins with an Italian man. He wanted to sail across the ocean to reach Asia, a continent rich with spices, silk, minerals, you know, that kind of stuff. Getting there by land would take ridiculously long, so he figured, hey, why not to build some sturdy ships and gather a couple of sailors and set off to Asia? What could go wrong? That man was Christopher Columbus, by the way. In 1492, with a little help from Spain's royal family, he embarked on his journey. Everything was going well, I mean, apart from totally going the wrong way. But as he got to the end of his voyage, he noticed something very strange. He didn't know it at the time, but he was sailing through the infamous Bermuda Triangle, the BT, the point of no return, the scary place between Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida. There are loads of stories of ships, boats, and planes disappearing into this mysterious realm. Some were found years later, and some disappeared off the face of the earth, lying undiscovered at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe. We know one thing for sure, we have no clue what's going on over there. People have been trying to figure it out for years, but nothing, zip, nada. So what was it that Christopher Columbus saw that fateful evening? What freaked him out so bad? According to his logs, Columbus saw a huge flash in the sky. I don't care how tough you are, if you're sailing around with no clue where you are, then you see a massive flash right in front of you? You'd find me hiding below deck, chewing on a lemon or something. That's not the only sea mystery out there, not by a long shot. Heard of the kraken? A giant squid that can swallow a whole ship. No? You're lucky. Imagine cruising on a ship, wind in your hair, hands on your hips like, you know, those old pirate movies. Then a huge squid creeps up on you from deep down in the cold, dark water. It wraps its tentacles around the ship and drags the whole thing to the bottom of the ocean. Good thing you packed a life raft. How about a colossal sea serpent chasing your boat at full speed, looking for a midday snack? That thing is called a leviathan, and you better hope it's not real. Or sirens, mean but beautiful creatures of the sea. They like to hang out on rocks and sing karaoke. Their magical voices attract sailors who sail their ships right into the sharp rocks. Now, mermaids, on the other hand, totally awesome. They like karaoke too, but they're not into the whole ship smashing thing. Good old mermaids. They're real, right? And let's not forget, peg-legged pirates. Arr, looting, raiding, saying arr every two seconds. Arr. What else do those guys do all day? So back to our Italian friend, Columbus. Maybe he just saw a thunderstorm. Duh, why didn't he think of that? Well, I'm not 600 years old, and I wasn't there. How on earth would I know? Weird thing is, he never mentioned any huge waves or heavy rain. No strong winds either. Just a single flash in the sky. Maybe some dolphins were setting off fireworks or something. After the flash, Columbus wrote that his compass needle started dancing all over the place. This keeps getting weirder and weirder. His report ends with a friendly turtle with sunglasses jumping out of the water, pushing the three ships to shore, and everyone went out to get hot dogs. Only kidding. So what happened? Scientists now think they've got the answer. Drum roll. An asteroid crashed into the ocean. Case closed. But wait, what about that stuff with the compass? What does that have to do with an asteroid? Asteroids come in all different shapes and sizes, but they're like chocolate eggs, the best parts on the inside. They're packed full of minerals and metals worth trillions of dollars. Scientists are even trying to figure out how to land on a big one and mine it. It'd have to be a really big one. I'm talking about an asteroid the size of Rhode Island. Why? Because chances are, it'd have a magnetic field around it, making it way easier to land on. Scientists think that the magnetic fields around some asteroids can last for millions of years. Mystery solved. Maybe. Captain Christopher Columbus's compass went cuckoo crazy because of an asteroid crashing right in front of him. That actually might explain some other strange Bermuda tales. The voyage started just like any other. The cargo ship SS Cotopaxi is making another journey to Havana, Cuba, to deliver coal. It's November 29, 1925. For Captain Meyer and his crew, leaving Charleston Port, South Carolina, it will be the last trip the ship ever makes. Its route ran through the Bermuda Triangle. Two days into the trip, the Cotopaxi sent out a distress signal. It had got caught up in a strong tropical storm and turned over on its side. The wind was very strong, and there was powerful lightning as well. Rain gradually filled the ship's hold. Then, there was a bright white flash, and the ship disappeared without a trace. Later, its wreckage was found in the Gobi Desert, which is in a completely different part of the world. All 32 crew members, including the captain, were missing. Of course, the part about the Gobi Desert is fictional. For one of his movies, Steven Spielberg came up with the idea that the ship was moved there by aliens. Still, in real life, the ship was never found, and its crew really did disappear. It was officially declared missing a month afterward, and nobody could find the wreck. It seems like a classic case of mysterious things going on in the Bermuda Triangle. But most mysteries are solved sooner or later. In 2020, the Cotopaxi was found. A man named Michael Barnett had moved to Florida to study shipwrecks off the coast. One wreck in particular really caught his attention. It was much larger than the others, and the locals called it the Bear Wreck. It was about 40 miles from St. Augustine in northern Florida, but no one had ever managed to identify the rusty hull. So Michael started to do some detective work. He measured the size of the shipwreck and started working through all the information he could find. He researched hundreds of old newspapers, leafed through insurance records, and looked at artifacts found on the wreck. After hundreds of hours of hard work, Michael was sure it was the Cotopaxi. But a few years before, there had been a rumor that the same ship had been found off the coast of Cuba. The Coast Guard found the wreck of a cargo ship about the same size that looked a lot like the one lost in 1925. Michael was sure they were wrong, so he teamed up with some science journalists and kept investigating. Soon they discovered something that seemed to confirm Michael's belief. Divers found brass valves with the letters SV on them in the wreckage of the ship. Michael suggested these initials referred to Scott Valve Manufacturing Company. The headquarters of this company was in Michigan, not far from where the Cotopaxi had been built. The company had probably supplied parts for the Cotopaxi. So the puzzle seemed to be solved. The bear wreck was really the missing cargo ship. But Michael still needed to work out why the ship had sunk. Did something mysterious really happen to the Cotopaxi in the Bermuda Triangle? Later, Michael found the testimony of the ship's carpenter among some old papers. The carpenter claimed that the hatches covering the coal on the ship had been in a terrible condition before it sank. Repair work on the covers wasn't finished before the crew got the order to sail to Cuba. So if the hatch covers were still broken during the trip, water could have easily gotten on board. This water probably flooded the hull during the tropical storm. This was the real reason why the Cotopaxi went down. There was really nothing mysterious about it. It was just a mistake made by ordinary people. But this is just one example out of dozens, or even hundreds, where ships and planes have gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle. We still can't explain some of these incidents. It seems like there really is something weird going on there. One of these strange events happened in 1948. A passenger jet was headed for Miami from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It disappeared in the same area as the Cotopaxi. The 32 people on board vanished without a trace. The weather was clear throughout the flight, but experts think that when the plane was about 50 miles from the coast, it could have been hit by a strong wind that knocked it off course. Years later, a similar plane was found in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. But because no one could work out the registration, it was impossible to say for sure if it was the same one. Something even stranger occurred not long before, in 1945. Five planes went missing all at the same time. Some trainee pilots were practicing their navigation skills. But when they'd finished, it seems they couldn't find their way back home and disappeared. Many people assume they just ran out of fuel. This seems likely, but still, the circumstances were really strange. The trainees were being supervised by an experienced pilot who had 2,500 hours of flight time. He would never have let a group of newbie pilots get that far away from their base. Even now, people still debate what could've happened. Some insist the pilots ran into something supernatural out there in the Bermuda Triangle. But who knows? The airplane involved was a Beechcraft Bonanza single-engine aircraft. On board, pilot Bruce Gurnon had two passengers, his father and business partner. They took off from Andros Island in the Bahamas and headed northwest for the Florida coast. It was December 4, 1970. If you draw up a map, trace a line connecting the island of Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Miami, and back to Bermuda, what do you get? Yes, it's a triangle. A sinister polygon known for mysteriously swallowing over 2,000 ships and 200 aircraft over the centuries. Bruce Gurnon's plane was within its hungry grasp. But this was a typical flight Bruce had made dozens of times before. The trip usually took about an hour and a half, with no hiccups or mysterious phenomena whatsoever. The men were no more concerned than you would be during your daily commute to work. Oh, but this time would be different. They would face very unusual circumstances indeed. Bruce took off and started gaining altitude. Strange things started happening right from the get-go. At an altitude of about 1,000 feet, he noticed a small cloud up ahead. But it kept growing. Not from the plane getting closer, this thing was actually getting bigger in size. Bruce had to fly through it, and he came out the other end just fine. Another mysterious cloud appeared at 11,500 feet. This one was massive, and Bruce had no other choice but to fly through it too. So he concentrated, took a deep breath, and in they went. At that moment, it got dark as night all around the aircraft. Not a single sliver of sunshine got through. But this wasn't a storm cloud, and it wasn't raining. Bruce was starting to get worried. And then, bam, he saw flashes of white light. They would appear and vanish quickly like lightning. But this pilot knew this certainly was no lightning. The flashes were so bright, they lit up the whole space around them. Bruce kept flying for another 30 minutes when he realized this was the same cloud he had gone through earlier when he started to climb. But now, the cloud was cylindrical, and the plane was flying through its center. It was about one mile wide and seemed endless. Bruce thought he could never get out of that trap. But a minute later, he saw light at the end of the tunnel. He kept that yoke straight ahead. He was almost out of this nightmare. But all of a sudden, unexplainable things started happening again. The walls of the cloud tunnel began to narrow. They were closing in on the plane. The navigational instruments started wigging out. The compass was spinning by itself counterclockwise. The electronic instruments were all malfunctioning. It was like the plane was being operated by something else. Or it was moving inside some kind of current. All of Bruce's attempts to take control were to no avail. He kept flying through that tunnel, bound and determined to get out of this thing and live to tell the tale. The walls kept narrowing, smaller and smaller, wrapping like a vortex. Bruce was running out of time. He had to get out of this place fast. The next 20 seconds were the most intense of his life. But then, he burst out of this foggy trap. As Bruce described later, he felt weightless for 5 seconds as his plane left the tunnel. The clouds dispersed, and now the aircraft was in a grayish haze. The men let out a big sigh of relief. He immediately grabbed the radio and contacted ground control. Bruce wanted them to determine his location. But when the dispatcher looked at the green screen, his face became contorted with confusion. Bruce's plane wasn't on the radar. It was as if the thing was invisible. But then the dispatcher said the aircraft was already in Miami airspace. Bruce was utterly shocked by this information. It just couldn't be true. The distance the Beechcraft was supposed to cover was about 250 miles. Remember, the whole trip usually took around 90 minutes. But this time, it took just 47 minutes to get to the destination. This model of aircraft can only cruise at about 180 mph. Do the math, and anyone would understand that this was physically impossible. The dispatcher must have made a mistake. But when the clouds parted, Bruce saw that he really was over Miami. The plane landed safely, and it was time to try and solve this mystery. So what happened on that flight? Bruce checked the remaining fuel in his watch. After a short calculation, he was only more confused. The plane hadn't gone through the amount of fuel it should've. Bruce couldn't have been wrong. He was a very experienced pilot. By his early 20s, he already had 600 hours of flight under his belt. And he was all too familiar with this airspace he'd flown countless times. All the evidence in hand seemed to indicate that Bruce's plane just skipped over almost half the entire distance. The man thought about this bizarre occurrence for a long time. He even consulted with professors and experts. But none of them could give an exact answer to what happened that day. So he came up with his own theory, and even wrote a book about it. Bruce thought it all came down to this electric fog with white flashes. Others, however, theorized that dark energy was responsible for this time leap. Yes, that same dark energy responsible for the expansion of the universe. This energy could've curved time-space like a black hole, forming this strange tunnel. Bruce accidentally hit it, but he was lucky to get out of there. That's how he got into Miami airspace so fast. But dark energy is just a theory attempting to explain the unexplainable. To this day, there is no real answer for how Bruce was able to travel that distance in such a short time. But some details still can be explained. Archive records show that 84 sunspots were recorded that day, as well as a huge solar wind moving almost 440 miles per second. This would cause disturbances in the Earth's magnetosphere that could throw off the plane's instruments and radars. So Bruce's version that he was in an electronic fog could be right. And about these weird clouds. The thing is, they're pretty commonplace things in this area. Zones with low and high pressure are constantly colliding there. The result? Storm clouds. That's it for today, so hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends. Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side!