Researchers from the Russian city of Tumen suggest a new hypothesis of the Bermuda Triangle mystery. Possible scientific breakthrough was reported during the conference “Geology and oil and gas occurrence of West Siberian mega-basin”. Scientists link the famous effect with accumulation of gas hydrates in Atlantic waters.

Bermuda Triangle is a region in the Atlantic Ocean, world famous for alleged mysterious vanishings of ships and airplanes. The region borders come from Florida to Bermuda islands, then further to Puerto-Rico and then back to Bahamas via Florida. The region is also known as the Devil's Triangle. There exist a number of hypotheses, which try to explain these disappearances; theories vary from unusual weather to alien abduction. However, skeptics claim that Bermuda Triangle cannot boast more ship disappearances than any other region of the World Ocean, and even more – this phenomenon has natural reasons.

Huge amounts of gas hydrates have accumulated at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas, California and Bermuda Islands, Russian researchers say. When the area experiences surges, tectonic faults form, and gas hydrates begin to dissolve and release gas. When a surface vehicle (a ship) gets into such an environment, it immediately sinks due to abrupt drop of ocean water density. The same destructive effect is observed, when an airplane gets inside a methane cloud and crashes. Such clouds usually form, when methane escapes to the atmosphere from ocean waters.

However, researchers admit that their hypothesis has no scientific evidence yet. Well, the presence of gas hydrates in waters of the Atlantic Ocean was confirmed in the eighties of the previous century during the American programme of deep water drilling. Gas hydrates are solid chemical compounds, which generate from methane and water under certain conditions of temperature and pressure. These compounds mainly occur in oceans and northern permafrost regions.

Natural gas hydrates, which contain methane, were first discovered in the USSR in 1965, when a young scientist, associate professor of Gubkin State University of Oil and Gas Yuri Makagon announced that gas hydrates could possibly exist in nature. Thirty-six months later explorers of the northern polar regions discovered Messoyakhskoye deposit, where free gas was buried under a thick layer of gas hydrates. That achievement was registered as a scientific discovery. Soviet Academy of Sciences maintained a state programme for studying gas hydrates until the middle of eighties of the previous century (when the Soviet Union started to collapse).

Natural gas hydrates possibly hide, according experts’ estimations, 100 times more gas than already explored gas fields do. To the moment geologists have already found over 220 fields of gas hydrates, which can compensate upcoming shortage of conventional energy carriers.

Source: Science & Technology

Kizilova Anna