the Bermuda triangle

Bermuda Triangle Facts

the location of bermuda triangle..

The Bermuda Triangle is a geographic area with it's points being at Miami, Florida, the island of Bermuda, and San Juan Puerto Rico.  In this area, over the course of time, many different aircraft and boats have mysteriously disappeared without a trace, leading many to believe that the triangle has something unusual about it that is swallowing up people, planes, and boats.

There are many theories as to why and how these things disappeared, but it has yet to be conclusively answered.  Many of the wrecks happened such that no remains or wreckage or oil slicks were ever found, and in at least one instance, and entire squadron of bombers, 5 planes, disappeared without a trace.  While out on a search for the bombers, another plane supposedly exploded over the sea, but no trace of it was ever found either.  The final recording of the head pilot back to the base was nearly incoherent, with him mumbling about entering white water, and saying "we can't make out anything."

After this event in 1945, people became interested in what exactly was going on in the Bermuda triangle, and why it seemed to attract so much unexplainable disaster.
A ship sinking in strange lighting.Bermuda Triangle Disappearances

After the 1945 Flight 19 disaster (with the 5 bombers), other disappearances started popping up.  Over the next five years, three more flights would disappear, along with 83 people.  From as early as 1843, ships have been occasionally disappearing from within the Bermuda triangle, and even on land in 1969, two people at the Lighthouse in Bimini suddenly disappeared and were never found.  All of these incidences have relatively similar aspects in that they don't show up later as wreckage, and that in the cases of the aircraft, there was never any oil slicks found on the ocean, which are common indicators of where a crash took place for sea crashes.  There are also a number of wrecks that have taken place that have been accounted for, and were the cause of natural calamities or human error.  It depends largely on what you're willing to believe.
Possible Reasons for the Disappearances

UFOs

there may be a ufo

Some theorists believe that the strange, unexplainable nature of these disappearances points to UFOs and abductions by extraterrestrial beings.  These occurrences first happened at the beginning of the UFO era, and it's thought that while in flight or on the boats, the UFOs come in and disorient the pilots and passengers, and then take the entire flight or boat into their crafts and fly off.  The best evidence of this is the pilot of Flight 19's strange comment, "we're entering white water..." which can't be explained by storms, as it was a clear day.

Atlantis

atlantis who mysteriously

The Lost City of Atlantis has long been considered a myth by most westerners who have heard of it, but some believe that Atlantis used to exist where the Bermuda Triangle is currently located, and that some left over technology deep beneath the sea is interfering with the planes and boats and causing them to crash or sink.  Some believe that the Bimini Road, which was discovered in 1968 underwater off the coast of Bimini in the Bahamas, is actually a road leading from the Bahamas to the former Atlantis, which is now resting under the sea.

A Wormhole

vortex bermuda triangle

Some believe that the strange disappearances point to odd physical properties somewhere within the Bermuda Triangle itself, suggesting that perhaps, somewhere, there is an element not currently understood by man, that causes certain laws of physics to change within the triangle.  It could, possibly, be a theoretical wormhole that transports those that pass through it to a different time and place in the universe.

Natural Reasons

Some have stated that because of the particularly rough weather going through the Bermuda Triangle, that it's possible that quick storms were whipped up that knocked planes out of the sky or sank ships without warning.  Perhaps because of the quick nature of these events, the crashes and sinking's took place quickly, disappearing underneath the service before a rescue party could be scrambled.  Some claim that it's simply human error, and at least one author has suggested that the amount of disappearances in a highly-traveled-through area such as the Bermuda triangle was not any more than the norm, and that the Bermuda Triangle theorists are simply alarmists, and that most of the Bermuda Triangle facts that have been released to the public have been sensationalized to sell papers or magazines.  Others suggest that the lack of explanation has led other, less malevolent authors, to seek out evidence rather that forming a theory based on the evidence as a whole.  You can always find evidence to support your conclusion if you're looking for evidence to support the conclusion in the first place, rather than developing a conclusion based off the evidence.

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global warming

Slow changes in the Earth’s orbit lead to small but climatically important changes in the strength of the seasons over tens of thousands of years. Climate feedbacks amplify these small changes, thereby producing ice ages.
Eccentricity

Earth’s orbit oscillates very slightly between nearly circular and more elongated every 100,000 years. This cycle is evident in the glacial/interglacial cycles of roughly the same period.

Orbital Eccentricity The Earth's orbital path varies in the degree to which it is circular. This change in its "eccentricity" varies between 0.00 and 0.06 on a 100,000 year cycle. When the eccentricity equals 0.00 the orbital path is circular and when it is 0.06 the orbital path is slightly elliptical. The current value is 0.0167.

Tilt

The Earth spins around an axis that is tilted from perpendicular to the plane in which the Earth orbits the Sun. This tilt causes the seasons. At the height of the Northern Hemisphere winter the North Pole is tilted away from the Sun, while in the summer it is tilted toward the Sun. The angle of the tilt varies between 22° and 24.5° on a cycle of 41,000 years. When the tilt angle is high, the polar regions receive less solar radiation than normal in winter and more in summer.

Earth's Tilt The Earth is tilted from perpendicular in its orientation to the Sun. This tilt varies from 22° to 24.5° on a 41,000 year cycle. The current tilt is 23.3°.

Wobble

There is a slow wobble in the Earth’s spin axis, which causes the peak of winter to occur at different points along the Earth’s elliptical orbital path. This variation in the seasons occurs on an approximately 23,000-year cycle.

Wobble of the Earth's Spin Axis The Earth's axis of rotation wobbles like a top on a 23,000 year cycle. This causes the Earth's seasons to reach their maximum at different distances from the Sun due to the elliptical shape of the Earth's orbit.

 

Small particles in the air (aerosols) may have warming or cooling effects, depending on their characteristics. Sulfate (SO₄) aerosol, for example, is light-colored and reflects sunlight back into space. The cooling effect of volcanic aerosols from the Mt. Tambora eruption of 1815 caused North America’s “year without a summer” in 1816. Sulfate aerosol is also produced by fossil fuel burning.

Black soot, which is a familiar component of urban smog and smoke from wild fires, has the opposite effect. The dark particles absorb the Sun’s energy in much the same way that dark asphalt roads become warm on sunny days.

Aerosols Can Have Different Effects Different types of small particles can have either warming or cooling effects. Sulfate aerosols released by volcanoes reflect sunlight and cool the Earth. Black soot released by smoke stacks and wild fires absorbs solar radiation and can warm the Earth. (Photo of Redoubt Volcano courtesy of USGS DDS-39)

Aerosol concentrations change for many reasons, including volcanic eruptions, spread of fires, increased windiness, drying of damp soils, changes in industrial processes, and more. Accurately projecting the extent and effect of aerosols is one of the major challenges in modeling the future 

Changes in clouds result from changes in the distribution of water vapor, temperature, and winds. The effects of global warming on these factors are complex and not well understood.

In addition, aerosols may also play a role in cloud formation. Tiny aerosol particles can “seed” clouds by providing the “nuclei” around which cloud droplets are formed. High concentrations of some aerosol types may affect the character of clouds by causing many tiny droplets to form rather than a few big ones. Clouds with more tiny droplets reflect more solar energy and tend to produce less rainfall.

Climate Is Changed by Many Processes
Climate change may result from both natural and human causes. The importance of human causes has been increasing during the past few decades.
Causes
The major causes of climate change are described in the following sections.

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the Milky Way galaxy

the Milky Way galaxy

A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas, dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter.[1][2] The name is from the Greek word galaxias [γαλαξίας], literally meaning "milky", a reference to the Milky Way galaxy. Typical galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million (107) stars,[3] up to giants with a hundred trillion (1014) stars,[4] all orbiting the galaxy's center of mass. Galaxies may contain many star systems, star clusters, and various interstellar clouds. The Sun is one of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy; the Solar System includes the Earth and all the other objects that orbit the Sun.

Historically, galaxies have been categorized according to their apparent shape (usually referred to as their visual morphology). A common form is the elliptical galaxy,[5] which has an ellipse-shaped light profile. Spiral galaxies are disk-shaped assemblages with dusty, curving arms. Galaxies with irregular or unusual shapes are known as irregular galaxies, and typically result from disruption by the gravitational pull of neighboring galaxies. Such interactions between nearby galaxies, which may ultimately result in galaxies merging, may induce episodes of significantly increased star formation, producing what is called a starburst galaxy. Small galaxies that lack a coherent structure could also be referred to as irregular galaxies.[6]

There are probably more than 170 billion (1.7 × 1011) galaxies in the observable universe.[7][8] Most galaxies are 1,000 to 100,000[9] parsecs in diameter and are usually separated by distances on the order of millions of parsecs (or megaparsecs).[10] Intergalactic space (the space between galaxies) is filled with a tenuous gas of an average density less than one atom per cubic meter. The majority of galaxies are organized into a hierarchy of associations called clusters, which, in turn, can form larger groups called superclusters. These larger structures are generally arranged into sheets and filaments, which surround immense voids in the universe.[11]

Although it is not yet well understood, dark matter appears to account for around 90% of the mass of most galaxies. Observational data suggests that supermassive black holes may exist at the center of many, if not all, galaxies. They are proposed to be the primary cause of active galactic nuclei found at the core of some galaxies. The Milky Way galaxy appears to harbor at least one such object within its nucleus.[12]

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The Moon

turns out the moon has a unique

The Moon has fascinated mankind throughout the ages. By simply viewing with the naked eye, one can discern two major types of terrain: relatively bright highlands and darker plains. By the middle of the 17th century, Galileo and other early astronomers made telescopic observations, noting an almost endless overlapping of craters. It has also been known for more than a century that the Moon is less dense than the Earth. Although a certain amount of information was ascertained about the Moon before the space age, this new era has revealed many secrets barely imaginable before that time. Current knowledge of the Moon is greater than for any other solar system object except Earth. This lends to a greater understanding of geologic processes and further appreciation of the complexity of terrestrial planets.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to step onto the surface of the Moon. He was followed by Edwin Aldrin, both of the Apollo 11 mission. They and other moon walkers experienced the effects of no atmosphere. Radio communications were used because sound waves can only be heard by travelling through the medium of air. The lunar sky is always black because diffraction of light requires an atmosphere. The astronauts also experienced gravitational differences. The moon's gravity is one-sixth that of the Earth's; a man who weighs 180 lbf (pound-force) on Earth weighs only 30 lbf on the Moon. (The equivalent metric weight (or force) is the Newton, where 4.45 Newtons equal one pound-force.)

The Moon is 384,403 kilometers (238,857 miles) distant from the Earth. Its diameter is 3,476 kilometers (2,160 miles). Both the rotation of the Moon and its revolution around Earth takes 27 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes. This synchronous rotation is caused by an unsymmetrical distribution of mass in the Moon, which has allowed Earth's gravity to keep one lunar hemisphere permanently turned toward Earth. Optical librations have been observed telescopically since the mid-17th century. Very small but real librations (maximum about 0°.04) are caused by the effect of the Sun's gravity and the eccentricity of Earth's orbit, perturbing the Moon's orbit and allowing cyclical preponderances of torque in both east-west and north-south directions.

Four nuclear powered seismic stations were installed during the Apollo project to collect seismic data about the interior of the Moon. There is only residual tectonic activity due to cooling and tidal forcing, but other moonquakes have been caused by meteor impacts and artificial means, such as deliberately crashing the Lunar Module into the moon. The results have shown the Moon to have a crust 60 kilometers (37 miles) thick at the center of the near side. If this crust is uniform over the Moon, it would constitute about 10% of the Moon's volume as compared to the less than 1% on Earth. The seismic determinations of a crust and mantle on the Moon indicate a layered planet with differentiation by igneous processes. There is no evidence for an iron-rich core unless it were a small one. Seismic information has influenced theories about the formation and evolution of the Moon.

The Moon was heavily bombarded early in its history, which caused many of the original rocks of the ancient crust to be thoroughly mixed, melted, buried, or obliterated. Meteoritic impacts brought a variety of "exotic" rocks to the Moon so that samples obtained from only 9 locations produced many different rock types for study. The impacts also exposed Moon rocks of great depth and distributed their fragments laterally away from their places of origin, making them more accessible. The underlying crust was also thinned and cracked, allowing molten basalt from the interior to reach the surface. Because the Moon has neither an atmosphere nor any water, the components in the soils do not weather chemically as they would on Earth. Rocks more than 4 billion years old still exist there, yielding information about the early history of the solar system that is unavailable on Earth. Geological activity on the Moon consists of occasional large impacts and the continued formation of the regolith. It is thus considered geologically dead. With such an active early history of bombardment and a relatively abrupt end of heavy impact activity, the Moon is considered fossilized in time.

The Apollo and Luna missions returned 382 kilograms (840 pounds) of rock and soil from which three major surface materials have been studied: the regolith, the maria, and the terrae. Micrometeorite bombardment has thoroughly pulverized the surface rocks into a fine-grained debris called the regolith. The regolith, or lunar soil, is unconsolidated mineral grains, rock fragments, and combinations of these which have been welded by impact-generated glass. It is found over the entire Moon, with the exception of steep crater and valley walls. It is 2 to 8 meters (7 to 26 feet) thick on the maria and may exceed 15 meters (49 feet) on the terrae, depending on how long the bedrock underneath it has been exposed to meteoritic bombardment.

The dark, relatively lightly cratered maria cover about 16% of the lunar surface and is concentrated on the nearside of the Moon, mostly within impact basins. This concentration may be explained by the fact that the Moon's center of mass is offset from its geometric center by about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in the direction of Earth, probably because the crust is thicker on the farside. It is possible, therefore, that basalt magmas rising from the interior reached the surface easily on the nearside, but encountered difficulty on the farside. Mare rocks are basalt and most date from 3.8 to 3.1 billion years. Some fragments in highland breccias date to 4.3 billion years and high resolution photographs suggest some mare flows actually embay young craters and may thus be as young as 1 billion years. The maria average only a few hundred meters in thickness but are so massive they frequently deformed the crust underneath them which created fault-like depressions and raised ridges.

The relatively bright, heavily cratered highlands are called terrae. The craters and basins in the highlands are formed by meteorite impact and are thus older than the maria, having accumulated more craters. The dominant rock type in this region contain high contents of plagioclase feldspar (a mineral rich in calcium and aluminum) and are a mixture of crustal fragments brecciated by meteorite impacts. Most terrae breccias are composed of still older breccia fragments. Other terrae samples are fine-grained crystalline rocks formed by shock melting due to the high pressures of an impact event. Nearly all of the highland breccias and impact melts formed about 4.0 to 3.8 billion years ago. The intense bombardment began 4.6 billion years ago, which is the estimated time of the Moon's origin.

Moon Statistics
Mass (kg)    7.349e+22
Mass (Earth = 1)    1.2298e-02
Equatorial radius (km)    1,737.4
Equatorial radius (Earth = 1)    2.7241e-01
Mean density (gm/cm^3)    3.34
Mean distance from Earth (km)    384,400
Rotational period (days)    27.32166
Orbital period (days)    27.32166
Average length of lunar day (days)    29.53059
Mean orbital velocity (km/sec)    1.03
Orbital eccentricity    0.0549
Tilt of axis (degrees)    1.5424
Orbital inclination (degrees)    5.1454
Equatorial surface gravity (m/sec^2)    1.62
Equatorial escape velocity (km/sec)    2.38
Visual geometric albedo    0.12
Magnitude (Vo)    -12.74
Mean surface temperature (day)    107°C
Mean surface temperature (night)    -153°C
Maximum surface temperature    123°C
Minimum surface temperature    -233°C

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Supernova

A supernova is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. It is pronounced play /ˌsuːpərˈnoʊvə/ with the plural supernovae /ˌsuːpərˈnoʊviː/ or supernovas. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this short interval a supernova can radiate as much energy as the Sun is expected to emit over its entire life span.[1] The explosion expels much or all of a star's material[2] at a velocity of up to 30,000 km/s (10% of the speed of light), driving a shock wave[3] into the surrounding interstellar medium. This shock wave sweeps up an expanding shell of gas and dust called a supernova remnant.

Nova (plural novae) means "new" in Latin, referring to what appears to be a very bright new star shining in the celestial sphere; the prefix "super-" distinguishes supernovae from ordinary novae, which also involve a star increasing in brightness, though to a lesser extent and through a different mechanism. The word supernova was coined by Swiss astrophysicist and astronomer Fritz Zwicky,[4][5] and was first used in print in 1926.[6] Several types of supernovae exist. Types I and II can be triggered in one of two ways, either turning off or suddenly turning on the production of energy through nuclear fusion. After the core of an aging massive star ceases generating energy from nuclear fusion, it may undergo sudden gravitational collapse into a neutron star or black hole, releasing gravitational potential energy that heats and expels the star's outer layers. Alternatively a white dwarf star may accumulate sufficient material from a stellar companion (either through accretion or via a merger) to raise its core temperature enough to ignite carbon fusion, at which point it undergoes runaway nuclear fusion, completely disrupting it. Stellar cores whose furnaces have permanently gone out collapse when their masses exceed the Chandrasekhar limit, while accreting white dwarfs ignite as they approach this limit (roughly 1.38[7] times the solar mass). White dwarfs are also subject to a different, much smaller type of thermonuclear explosion fueled by hydrogen on their surfaces called a nova. Solitary stars with a mass below approximately 9 solar masses, such as the Sun, evolve into white dwarfs without ever becoming supernovae.

Although no supernova has been observed in the Milky Way since 1604, supernovae remnants indicate on average the event occurs about once every 50 years in the Milky Way.[8] They play a significant role in enriching the interstellar medium with higher mass elements.[9] Furthermore, the expanding shock waves from supernova explosions can trigger the formation of new stars.

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Black Holes

NOTE: This section is about stellar-mass black holes. For information about black holes that measure in the billions of solar masses, see Active Galaxies & Quasars .

There are many popular myths concerning black holes, many of them perpetuated by Hollywood. Television and movies have portrayed them as time-traveling tunnels to another dimension, cosmic vacuum cleaners sucking up everything in sight, and so on. It can be said that black holes are really just the evolutionary end point of massive stars. But somehow, this simple explanation makes them no less mysterious, and no easier to understand.

black hole is located deep in the Milky Way galaxy

Black holes: What are they?

Black holes are the evolutionary endpoints of stars at least 10 to 15 times as massive as the Sun. If a star that massive or larger undergoes a supernova explosion, it may leave behind a fairly massive burned-out stellar remnant. With no outward forces to oppose gravitational forces, the remnant will collapse in on itself. The star eventually collapses to the point of zero volume and infinite density, creating what is known as a "singularity." Around the singularity is a region where the force of gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. Thus, no information can reach us from this region. It is therefore called a black hole, and its surface is called the "event horizon."

But contrary to popular myth, a black hole is not a cosmic vacuum cleaner. If our Sun was suddenly replaced with a black hole of the same mass, Earth's orbit around the Sun would be unchanged. Of course, Earth's temperature would change, and there would be no solar wind or solar magnetic storms affecting us. To be "sucked" into a black hole, one has to cross inside the Schwarzschild radius. At this radius, the escape speed is equal to the speed of light, and once light passes through, even it cannot escape.

The Schwarzschild radius can be calculated using the equation for escape speed:

vesc = (2GM/R)1/2

For photons, or objects with no mass, we can substitute c (the speed of light) for Vesc and find the Schwarzschild radius, R, to be

R = 2GM/c2

If the Sun was replaced with a black hole that had the same mass as the Sun, the Schwarzschild radius would be 3 km (compared to the Sun's radius of nearly 700,000 km). Hence the Earth would have to get very close to get sucked into a black hole at the center of our Solar System.

If we can't see them, how do we know they are there?

Since stellar black holes are small (only a few to a few tens of kilometers in diameter), and light that would allow us to see them cannot escape, a black hole floating alone in space would be hard, if not impossible, to see in the visual spectrum.

However, if a black hole passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, or is close to another "normal" star, the black hole can accrete matter into itself. As the matter falls or is pulled towards the black hole, it gains kinetic energy, heats up and is squeezed by tidal forces. The heating ionizes the atoms, and when the atoms reach a few million Kelvin, they emit X-rays. The X-rays are sent off into space before the matter crosses the Schwarzschild radius and crashes into the singularity. Thus we can see this X-ray emission.

Binary X-ray sources are also places to find strong black hole candidates. A companion star is a perfect source of infalling material for a black hole. A binary system also allows the calculation of the black hole candidate's mass. Once the mass is found, it can be determined if the candidate is a neutron star or a black hole, since neutron stars always have masses of about 1.5 times the mass of the Sun. Another sign of the presence of a black hole is its random variation of emitted X-rays. The infalling matter that emits X-rays does not fall into the black hole at a steady rate, but rather more sporadically, which causes an observable variation in X-ray intensity. Additionally, if the X-ray source is in a binary system, and we see it from certain angles, the X-rays will be periodically cut off as the source is eclipsed by the companion star. When looking for black hole candidates, all these things are taken into account. Many X-ray satellites have scanned the skies for X-ray sources that might be black hole candidates.

Cygnus X-1 (Cyg X-1) is the longest known of the black hole candidates. It is a highly variable and irregular source, with X-ray emission that flickers in hundredths of a second. An object cannot flicker faster than the time required for light to travel across the object. In a hundredth of a second, light travels 3,000 kilometers. This is one fourth of Earth's diameter. So the region emitting the X-rays around Cyg X-1 is rather small. Its companion star, HDE 226868 is a B0 supergiant with a surface temperature of about 31,000 K. Spectroscopic observations show that the spectral lines of HDE 226868 oscillate with a period of 5.6 days. From the mass-luminosity relation, the mass of this supergiant is calculated as 30 times the mass of the Sun. Cyg X-1 must have a mass of about 7 solar masses, or it would not exert enough gravitational pull to cause the wobble in the spectral lines of HDE 226868. Other estimate put the mass of Cyg X-1 to as much as 16 solar masses. Since 7 solar masses is too large to be a white dwarf or neutron star, it must be a black hole.

These black holes can suck in nearby star

An illustration of Cygnus X-1, showing the companion star HDE 226868,

the black hole, material streaming from the companion to the black hole,

and the emission of X-rays near the black hole.

There are now about 20 X-ray binaries (as of early 2009) with known black holes (from measurements of the black hole mass). The first of these, an X-ray transient called A0620-00, was discovered in 1975, and the mass of the compact object was determined in the mid-1980's to be greater than 3.5 solar masses. This very clearly excludes a neutron star, which has a mass near 1.5 solar masses, even allowing for all known theoretical uncertainties. The best case for a black hole is probably V404 Cygni, whose compact star is at least 10 solar masses. There are an additional 20 X-ray binaries which are likely to contain black holes - their behavior is the same as the confirmed black holes, but mass measurements have not been possible.

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