h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There was a really interesting programme on Channel Four this evening, where a flight investigator, piecing together evidence reckoned the flight overshot its turning point and found itself flying alongside land rather that coming towards it. They thought they were near the Florida Keys, when they were actually in the Atlantic. The investigator thought that Taylor had 'flight disorientation', having got an idea into his head and in the end, took his flight further out to sea, just when Fort Lauderdale had got a fix on them placing them only 25 minutes from land.

They also did an experiment with gas, which showed that a ship hitting a pocket of gas could sink as one part lost buoyancy (they sunk a small boat at sea using a lattice of pipes with holes to allow air out), which could explain some of the 124 or so ships which get lost there annually. Here's a good link for the Marine Sulphur Queen: http://home.pacbell.net/corwind/Triangle.html

Around 24 planes are lost in the triangle annually too.

Where did you get those numbers ZSF? 124 ships and 24 planes annualy seems an awful lot, even when one takes into consideration that its an area with lots of sea and air traffic, and quite a large part of it private planes and vessels out of some of the most busy tourist capitols of the world.

The gas pocket idea fascinated me when I first read about it, and before I read statistical checks showing that the Bermuda triangle was no more mysterious than any other patch of ocean in the world. http://www.skepdic.com/bermuda.html nicely sums up why this mystery is actually not mysterious at all. And the idea of gas pockets, which isn't a necessary theory since there is a dearth of real mysterious disappearances, doesn't pan out, as described here: http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/hydrates/bermuda.html

Finaly, the most important links to follow from the Marine Sulphur Queen site is the one to the Coast Guard Reports, they're a bit tedious but show that although the exact circumstances around the disappearance of the MSQ are unknown there are plenty of well founded theories. It was a dangerous cargo and a dangerous ship, and chances are it could have poisoned its crew, caught fire, broken in half(!) or all of the above.

Perhaps he meant lost as in 'lose orientation' as opposed to lost 'never to be seen again'.

The numbers were stated on teh Channel 4 programme, probably by the narrator - as it's a while since I saw the programme, I can't remember. There was an experiment done on the programme to see if a ship/boat on a bed of bas bubbles could sink - and one did. It had to be on the edge of one, as if it was on the whole, the effect was spread all over the boat, which meant it didn't sink. The differential water density did it.