Name: The Bermuda Triangle

Age: 52 years.

Appearance: Then all of a sudden … disappearance!

Location: Between Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda (approx).

What is it? Well, according to Vincent Gaddis, who first coined the phrase in a pulp magazine article in 1964, the Bermuda Triangle is an area of the western North Atlantic where ships and planes are strangely likely to vanish without trace. It’s also a terrible song by Barry Manilow.

I see. Leaving Manilow aside for now, why would things southwest of Bermuda suddenly vanish? Some suggest the involvement of aliens, the devil and the lost city of Atlantis. Some say that the magnetic properties of the rocks might scramble compass readings, others that giant bubbles of methane might sink ships when they reach the surface.

Hilarious! Actually, that last one might be true. Researchers at the Arctic University of Norway have just discovered huge underwater craters off the coast of Norway, which they consider “probably a cause of enormous blowouts of gas”. The craters that is, not Norway.

Goodness. And ships certainly could sink suddenly if the water beneath them turned to foam, which these craters – measuring up to 45m deep and 800m wide – could be capable of doing.

So that solves the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle? Nope.

Why not? First, it isn’t clear whether gas blowouts happen in the triangle area. Second, even if they did, it isn’t clear how they would make planes vanish from the sky above. Third, several of the incidents attributed to “the Bermuda Triangle” involve people vanishing from ships, rather than whole ships vanishing. Fourth, there isn’t anything mysterious about the Bermuda Triangle to start with.

What? Gaddis’s original article, and others that followed it, were total cobblers. Some supposedly vanished boats were later found. Other vanishings, such as the disappearance in 1945 of the five Flight 19 training planes, just aren’t difficult to explain. (They got lost and ran out of fuel.) Indeed boats and planes only vanish in the Bermuda Triangle about as often as they vanish everywhere else.

So you could say that the Bermuda Triangle itself is … a phantom mystery? Erm, yes, if you feel like it.

Do say: Did aliens make people believe that ships were going missing in the west Atlantic?

Don’t say: Attack of the killer sea farts!