张沛竹 北京市海淀区育英中学高二（八）班阅读书目：百慕大三角 The Bermuda Triangle （DK英汉对照百科读物）
After reading The Bermuda Triangle, I became very curious about the Bermuda Triangle area. Why did the Flight19disappear? Why did clouds in the sky suddenly turn yellow?
From the book I knew that in the Bermuda Triangle area, the compasses and other instruments stop working. If it is true, that will be terrible. We can’t work out which direction we are going to. The main part of the Triangle lies between southern Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, but odd things also happened in the Sargasso Sea and all the way south to Barbados.
Up till now, many strange things have happened in this area. There are four major types of odd things that people can not explain. The first is about the yellow cloud in the sky. Some pilots and ships’ captains reported that they saw a yellow fog in the Bermuda Triangle. When they approached the area, the sky suddenly turned yellow, the sea and the sky seemed to join together. As a result, they could not tell where they were, or in what direction they were heading.
The second odd thing is the missing of ships, planes and sailors. Ever since old times, reports have been accumulated about missing sailing ships and sailors. In modern times, planes and pilots also got lost. Over1,500 people have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle area in the past50 years.
The third strange thing is that in this area compasses and other instruments stop working. Even the satellite connection is gone.
The last strange thing is that people see strange lights and unidentified ships in this area. And more UFOs are reported in this area than in any other parts of the world.
Many modern reports about the Bermuda Triangle show that a strange yellow fog frequently emerges above the sea. In1966, a tug called the Good News was going to Fort Lauderdale from Puerto Rico. She was pulling a cargo barge behind her on the end of a strong line. The Good News was a very powerful ship. However, when she got to the are a of her mid-voyage between Puerto Rico and Port Lauderdale, the instruments on the ship suddenly went mad. Most of them stopped working. The compass ran around and around crazily. When the sailors looked out, they found a yellow fog covering the barge. At the end of the line, the sea and sky seemed to join together. Captain Henry and his crew tried their best and finally the ship’s engines were turned to full power, and the cargo barge came out the fog.
After consulting many books, I found that the tale of yellow fog has been of a current basis. People did not mention that fog in the past. I personally perceive that the yellow fog is a natural phenomenon of modern times. The sea area between Puerto Rico and Port Lauderdale has been heavily polluted in the past several decades. Large quantity of hydrochloric acid water has been thrown into the sea. Chemical analyses show that hydrochloric acid is one of the principal pollutants in the water. Still more data indicate that manganese nucleus has been found among the mineral deposits in the seabed of this area. Beneath the surface of the seawater grows a red plant called sargassum. This plant can produce oxygen. When manganese joins the oxygen, they become manganese dioxide (MnO2), which in turn interacts with the hhydrochloric acid contained in the water. When the heating condition is satisfied, a yellow gas of chlorine will be generated. As the following formula shows:
Thus, the yellow fog around the cargo is most probably the chloric gas. As for the heaviness felt by the tug, I think we need to take the nervousness of the sailors into consideration. So my claim is that the strange yellow fog is not a wicked stranger of any kind, but a Frankenstein of our own.
I am also curious about the experience of Catalina. Catalina is a flying boat. On June11,1986, she was on her way to Jacksonville. When Martin Caidin and his friends were enjoying their flying, they found that the clear sky was suddenly full of cloud. Soon they were trapped in the cloud and all the instruments on the plane stopped working. When they were flying blindly, Cardin found a small hole in front of the cockpit. The hole went down through the cloud all the way to the ocean. They soon discovered that they were flying at the same speed with the small hole, so they grasped the chance and flew within the sight of the small piece of blue sea. After struggling for a couple of hours, suddenly they found themselves flying in a clear blue sky again. They were safe and sound now.
In my opinion, the yellow cloud they encountered and the small hole of blue sea must be a waterspout. The Bermuda Triangle area is also known for its unusual weather. Sudden storms are common and some weather conditions can produce waterspout. As we know, most waterspouts have a hole in the middle which is known as the “eye of waterspout”. This “eye” is in fact a small area where air in enclosed by the circling clouds moving in very quick speed. If the objects pulled up by the quick wind can manage to fly at the same speed with this “eye”, they may fortunately get through the waterspout without being destroyed. Cardin and his friends were those lucky ones who were caught in the middle of the “eye” and their well-equipped plane enabled them to fly at the same speed with it. Thanks to their plane and their good luck, they survived the waterspout and finally got to safety.
The strange phenomena in the Bermuda Triangle area tell us that human beings are only one part of the nature. Through the long history of development, men got to know more and more about the world we are living in. However, there are still more natural phenomena we do not know. Whilst we try to ask the nature to give us more, we need to pay close attention to what we have done to the nature. And to know this world and the universe our planet belongs to, we human beings still have a long way to go.
