The Bermuda Triangle is a region of the Atlantic Ocean that has become famous for stories of ships and planes disappearing without a trace. Some people claim that there are supernatural forces at work in the area, such as methane gas escaping from ocean sediments or the influence of the lost continent of Atlantis. Others speculate that the disappearances are caused by human error, such as pilots failing to compensate for magnetic compass variations or the effects of a nearby hurricane.
There are a number of different maps of the Bermuda Triangle, with the most common ones showing a triangular shape with the vertices at Bermuda, Miami, and Puerto Rico. However, these maps vary in size, with some claiming that the triangle covers up to 1.5 million square miles. Additionally, there are also some writers who have expanded the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle by including the straits of Florida and the Caribbean islands into its area of coverage.
The official US Navy map of the Bermuda Triangle is much smaller than these other maps, and it shows that the area is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world and that commercial and pleasure ships frequently pass through it without incident. The US Board on Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as a real place, and there is no scientific evidence that mysterious ship and plane disappearances are more frequent in this area than in any other part of the ocean.
