Forget whirlpools, sea monsters and aliens. One expert claims that he's 'solved' the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle - and despite being explained by science, it will still send a shiver down your spine.
Interviewed for a Channel 5 documentary, Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, which first aired in 2019, Nick Hutchings, a mineral prospector, said that geology could explain the disappearances of planes and boats.
According to Britannica, the mysterious roughly triangular-shaped part of the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North America has seen more than 50 ships and 20 airplanes disappear without a trace.
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Also known as 'The Devil's Triangle', reports of disappearances in the region off the Atlantic coast of Florida to the Greater Antilles islands date back to the middle of the 19th century with no apparent reason, distress signals or wreckage and crews and passengers never to be heard of again.
So if the conspiracy theories are wrong and it's not something supernatural making these boats disappear into thin air - what does Hutchings put it down to?
Well, rocks, apparently.
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Hutchings explained to camera in the 60-minute doc: “Bermuda’s basically a sea mountain – it’s an underwater volcano. 30 million years ago, it was sticking up above sea level.
"It has now eroded away and we’re left with the top of a volcano. We have a few core samples, which have magnetite in them. It’s the most magnetic naturally occurring material on Earth.”
So what does that mean happened to the ships?
Hutchings used the doc to conduct an experiment to demonstrate - using only a small piece of the rock and a compass.
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When the compass was passed over the rock its needle went berserk rendering the navigational device completely useless.
"You can just imagine the ancient mariners sailing past Bermuda," he explained. "It would be very disconcerting.”
In other words - people were simply lost.
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And while sailors claim to have encountered ghost ships and other weird goings on in the creepy area, Karl Kruszelnicki, a scientist at Sydney University in Australia claims the percentage of missing planes and boats is similar to any other high-traffic part of the ocean - meaning it isn't really so mysterious after all.
Kruszelnicki believes missing people and vessels are mostly down to bad weather and poor navigational decisions.
He told news.com.au back in 2017: “It is close to the Equator, near a wealthy part of the world – America - therefore you have a lot of traffic.
“According to Lloyd’s of London and the US Coastguard, the number that go missing in the Bermuda Triangle is the same as anywhere in the world on a percentage basis.”
Featured Image Credit: Lightguard via Getty Viktor Habbick Visions via GettyTopics: News, Weird, Travel, Conspiracy Theory