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  • 2016-10-25 (xsd:date)
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  • Scientists Finally Solve the Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle? (en)
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  • 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 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: 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: Another quote, from Colorado State University satellite meteorologist Steve Miller, turned a mundane scientific statement into a tantalizing mystery: 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: Any physical explanation for an anomalous number of disappearances in a specific area should have, as a defining characteristic, something that makes it unique to that area. The hexagonal cloud explanation fails to meet this low bar, a point made by Miller and reinforced by the same USA Today story: Finally, the existence of the Bermuda Triangle as a mysterious place where ships and planes frequently disappear without explanation is far from an accepted fact. A deeply researched 1975 book by Lawrence Kusche looked at the records of many of the so-called disappearances and found them to be questionable, inaccurately reported, or embellished. In 2013, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) issued an exhaustive study of the most dangerous shipping regions in the world’s oceans. The Bermuda triangle didn't even make the cut. (en)
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