The Bermuda Hexagon
A perfect storm of sensationalist, ratings-driven science TV, and extremely lazy click-driven journalism resulted in a viral story that explains literally nothing about the “Bermuda Triangle”.
by Alex Kasprak
Oct 25, 2016
CLAIM: Satellite images of hexagon-shaped holes in clouds above the Bermuda Triangle prove that large blasts of sinking air are the cause of mysterious shipwrecks and plane crashes in the area.
FALSE
ORIGIN:
On 26 April 2016, the
Science Channel premiered an
episode of their show “What on Earth?” that (in part) purported to explain the disappearances of ships and planes in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle through a natural meteorological phenomenon known as
microbursts.
Though the
Science Channel has heavily promoted an online video of that segment on social media since May 2016, it became a viral news story when the news outlets such as the UK's
Daily Mail and
Mirror Online picked it up as a new “finding” on 21 October 2016:
The mystery behind the Bermuda Triangle may have finally been cracked. The 500,000 km square stretch in the North Atlantic Ocean has been blamed for the disappearance of at least 75 planes and hundreds of ships over the centuries. But scientists claim the truth behind the “deadly triangle” is all down to hexagonal clouds that create terrifying 170 mph winds[sic] air bombs. It is believed these deadly blasts of air can flip over ships and bring planes crashing into the ocean.
The logic behind the actual
Science Channel segment that this claim is based on, if it is a cohesive argument at all, can be summarized as follows:
- A NASA satellite took a picture of some hexagon-shaped gaps in clouds over Bermuda.
- Another satellite, which had the additional ability to map ocean waves and winds, has captured the same type of clouds over the North Sea, and they were associated with big waves and heavy winds.
- Meteorologists say this pattern is the signature of a real phenomenon called a microburst that creates strong winds.
- The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle is solved!
When both the
Daily Mail and the
Mirror Online reported this story in October 2016, they used quotes from the
Science Channel segment in a way that suggested they had performed original reporting to verify the claims made in the video. One quote, from Arizona State University climatologist Randall Cerveny,
explained the mechanics of a downburst while putting the term "air bomb" into play:
These types of hexagonal shapes over the ocean are in essence air bombs. They are formed by what are called microbursts and they’re blasts of air that come down out of the bottom of a cloud and then hit the ocean and then create waves that can sometimes be massive in size as they start to interact with each other.
Another
quote, from Colorado State University satellite meteorologist Steve Miller, turned a mundane scientific statement into a tantalizing mystery:
You don’t typically see straight edges with clouds. Most of the time, clouds are random in their distribution.
Both statements are factual. However, neither scientist claimed that the mechanism they were describing had any explanatory power for the purported anomalous number of disappearances of ships and planes in the area. In a 21 October 2016
USA Today article, both scientists suggested their comments had been
misrepresented by the
Science Channel: ...
http://www.snopes.com/scientists-solve-bermuda-triangle/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social