"I was surprised," my correspondent rather kindly put it, "that a man as widely read as you would be so dismissive of the Bermuda Triangle". He was referring to the Weather Eye a week or two ago that discussed the mysterious disappearance of numerous ships and aeroplanes in the southwest corner of the north Atlantic over several decades.
Some felt there was something spooky, or even paranormal, going on in the vicinity, while most, perhaps, dismissed the clustered disappearances as mere coincidence. The writer, however, went on to describe in considerable detail a slightly convincing scientific explanation for these missing craft. And lo, the next post brought a print-out from a colleague in geology of a paper in December's issue of the Oil and Gas Journal which deals with the subject in extenso. Let me attempt a resume, an apercu, insofar as I can understand what might be going on. We all know that that if you apply enough pressure, or reduce the temperature sufficiently, or both, a gas becomes a liquid, and then solid. However, if certain kinds of gas are mixed with water, solid crystals known as hydrates can form under less extreme conditions.
Hydrates have been described as "explosive ice". When put into warm water they do not gradually melt like ordinary ice, but bubble effervescently, and may even, perhaps, behave explosively. Hydrates, it seems, are common under polar ice-caps.
But another favourable zone is the sea bed, where very high pressure, a temperature in the region of 4 or 5 Celsius, and concentrations of methane and other gases from animal and vegetable decay, all combine to provide the right conditions and ingredients. Now it seems that the continental shelf off South Carolina is particularly rich in hydrates. The Bermuda Triangle scientific theory believes occasional submarine landslides from the continental shelf-edge may disturb the water temperature or pressure distribution sufficiently to cause the hydrates to become unstable.
Should this occur, it has been argued, the dissociated gas bubbling to the surface in large quantities may decrease the density of the water, and hence affect the buoyancy of ships.
In a more dramatic scenario, the rising hydrates, under the influence of rapidly increasing temperature and falling pressure, may detonate explosively; their methane self-ignites when it comes in contact with the air, and the son et lumiere is rounded off with a great vertical whoosh of super-heated steam.
This, it is argued, may explain all those missing ships and aircraft in that corner of the world. It seems that in the case of the Bermuda Triangle, the jury is still out.