By: Srushti Nerkar
From: Princeton Junction, NJ, USA
The Mysterious Disappearance of the USS Cyclops
The USS Cyclops was the largest collier in the US Navy during World War I. When the Cyclops was assigned to refuel British ships in Brazil, it would be forever lost. When the ship didn’t return back to Maryland, the US navy tried to contact the ship many times. When there was no answer, many people thought that either a German ship had attacked the Cyclops or that it sank due to a storm. While most sunken ships had been found under the ocean or washed away on a shore, the USS Cyclops was never found. Many people theorize that the ship had gone through the Bermuda Triangle and never returned. There have also been many circumstances where unexpected disappearances have happened on airplanes, for example Flight 19. To this day, Flight 19 still has not been found and has left no trace of its disappearance. Nowadays, flights and ships tend to completely avoid this area and for now there haven’t been any major disappearances. However, this brings up an important question: what exactly happens in the Bermuda Triangle and why do these mysterious things happen?
So what’s the truth of the Bermuda Triangle?
People had made up stories to what had happened to all the disappearances near the Bermuda Triangle, even made up that an octopus sucks up all the boats and planes. Since the missing ships never left a trace of what might have happened to them, it left people utterly confused, resulting them to think fictionally. However in 2016, satellite meteorologists noticed a weird shaping of the clouds near the Bermuda Triangle. They say that the clouds were shaped exactly like hexagons and that maybe weather that had something to do with the unexpected disappearances. When they zoomed up, they had an idea of what might be happening: micro-bursts. Micro-bursts are small blasts of air coming from the clouds which then hit the ocean, but sometimes they can be unexpectedly huge resulting in large winds. However, when meteorologists also saw hexagonal clouds in the North Sea implying that these micro-bursts were not the reason why the Bermuda Triangle was so dangerous. For now, many scientists just believe the Bermuda area contains many violent thunderstorms because the location is very prone to that type of weather.
Conclusion
For now the Bermuda Triangle still remains a mystery or the Bermuda Triangle may not exist at all, but rather just a justification of what might be human error, bad weather etc. However, in today’s society, with the abundance of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, it has led to more catastrophic storms. As of 2020 so far, we have had 25 named storms, 9 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes. Because of this, we need to make sure that we are doing what we can to cut down use of fossil fuels, because in the future, we may never know the future disasters in the Bermuda Triangle and the future unexpected disappearances it might result in.
Author: Srushti Nerkar
Srushti is a junior who is passionate about biology research in forensics. In her free time, she loves to watch Star Wars movies and find new DIY crafts to do.
Nelson, Bryan. “About That New Bermuda Triangle Theory ...” Treehugger, www.treehugger.com/bizarre-clouds-over-bermuda-triangle-may-finally-solve-mystery-4862098.
Weisberger, Mindy. “No, 'Honeycomb' Clouds Don't Explain the Bermuda Triangle Mystery.” LiveScience, Purch, 24 Oct. 2016, www.livescience.com/56622-bermuda-triangle-air-bombs-not-likely.html.
The Infographics Show, “Bermuda Triangle Mystery: What Happened to the USS Cyclops?,” Youtube, 4 March. 2020,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9OtiZiTizE,
That's a good point made at the end: we wonder about the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle disasters, but we should be actively preventing future disasters by focusing on the issue of global warming.