Mystery Lab (Mundo Mistério)

What could be behind the mysterious disappearances

of ships and airplanes in the Bermuda Triangle?

Aliens?

A series of scary coincidences?

A supernatural phenomenon?

Or are there other explanations for the secrets

of such an enigmatic place?

It all happened in December 1945,

a few months after World War II ended.

Five Avenger bombers from the US Navy

took off from a base in Florida and flew to the Atlantic Ocean

for a training mission.

The flight plan was pretty simple.

They would fly eastbound for a bombing exercise.

Then, they would return to base with no major issues.

The first part of the exercise went well.

Led by the experienced Lieutenant Taylor,

the squad, also called Flight 19,

finished their training and continued east.

The problem is, after flying for an hour and a half,

Lt. Taylor noticed that the compasses in his plane

were not working as they should.

Believing he was south of the base,

he requested coordinates from air traffic control,

who recommended he went north.

But that led the squad straight to the middle of the ocean.

When Taylor realized that, it was too late.

The planes didn't have enough fuel

to go back to the continent.

A little over four hours after the mission started,

the base picked up a message from Taylor telling the other pilots

to make an emergency landing on water.

It was the last we heard of Flight 19.

Nobody heard from the planes or the 14 crew members ever again.

More than 200 planes and multiple ships from the Navy

searched the Atlantic, looking for traces of Flight 19.

They never found anything.

To this day, we don't know exactly what happened to them.

Or do we?

A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES

Have you ever heard about the Bermuda Triangle?

Did you like it? I spent two dollars on this ringtone.

Betinho, how long have you been sitting there watching me?

Not long, about 20 minutes or so.

But I heard a good amount of the story.

Is it true that the planes vanished? Five of them?

Yes, it's one of the most famous mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle.

I'm not talking about Bermuda shorts

-like you might be thinking. -I'm thinking this is about Bermuda,

the center of an archipelago of hundreds of coral islands,

discovered by Juan Bermúdez in the early 16th century.

But you were talking about Bermuda shorts, so...

No, dude. You're right. Studying hard for that GED, huh?

Yeah, I'm trying to make up for lost time.

Anyway, keep going. I need to take some notes here.

-Can't wait to get to the aliens part. -No, hold on.

The alien stuff deserves some special attention, Betinho.

I'll get there, but first things first.

The Bermuda Triangle is a region in the Atlantic Ocean

that is nearly twice the size of the state of Bahia.

ALMOST 2X BAHIA

The entire area is shaped like a huge triangle.

One of its tips is in Miami, United States.

The other is in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

And the third tip is right here, in the Bermuda Islands.

BERMUDA ISLANDS

This place became really famous in the second half of the 20th century

due to reports of disappearances of many ships and airplanes.

The most incredible thing is that nobody knew what happened.

They never found any shipwrecks or signs of crew members.

And I don't mean just one or two cases here.

Some people say the first accounts

are from the times of Christopher Columbus.

And he died in 1506.

It's a mystery that may have started centuries ago,

during the Age of Discovery.

But the most famous accounts began in the 19th century.

It's impossible to determine the number of cases,

but some people say that, to this day,

hundreds of ships and airplanes vanish around here.

Castanhari, my systems are getting unstable

due to the thunderstorm.

What do you mean, Briggs? You don't have a power cord.

My operation depends on the server located in Dr. Tayane's lab.

Okay. Castanhari, keep going. You were getting to the aliens, right?

I'll keep going.

Let's hope Briggs doesn't lose connection.

For a long time, many believed that the people who vanished

had been abducted by aliens.

Because only that could explain their full disappearance,

without a trace.

These theories got even stronger

with the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind,

directed in the 70s by Steven Spielberg.

It shows, in a very scary way, several alien abductions,

including those of the pilots of the mysterious Flight 19.

FLIGHT 19

Reports of disappearances in that place are filled with suspense and mystery.

It wasn't unusual, for example, to find ships wandering around

with no crew members on board.

Because part of the Bermuda Triangle

is in an area known as Sargasso Sea,

feared by past navigators

due to its calm waters.

The lack of strong winds

would make it extremely hard to cross through the place,

and multiple vessels would spend weeks, or even months,

trying to leave the region.

Feeling desperate, crew members would abandon their ships on rowboats

to try to reach the continent before dying from thirst and starvation.

Thus, the vessels would become adrift,

sailing for years and years with no living soul on board.

Ghost ships, in every aspect.

But wait. These abduct-- I mean, these disappearances...

They don't happen anymore, right?

Are you sure, Betinho?

In 2015, the cargo ship El Faro disappeared while navigating

in the same area where a hurricane crossed the Triangle.

The shipwreck was found

at the bottom of the ocean.

DEPTH 5 KM

But they never found the slightest sign of crew members.

But didn't they know they were heading towards the hurricane?

Wasn't there a compass to...

What if it happened just like you said about that plane,

-with the crazy compasses? -I don't know, Betinho.

Maybe something there makes the compasses go haywire.

The UFOs.

Communication failure with the circuit--

Huh? What the--

Why is the light in the lab the only one that's on? This is weird.

What is that?

-Tay? -Who else would it be?

DOCTOR TAYANE

I just wore that outfit to repair the power system.

Briggs's server should be rebooting now.

The power will go back to normal in a few seconds.

System rebooted.

Error found.

The lights on the second floor are not responding.

Initiating security repair.

SECURITY REPAIR

So, Tay, I was wondering

if there's anything that could make a compass go haywire.

Did you know I made my first compass when I was seven?

The Earth can be seen as a giant magnet

because it's surrounded by an enormous magnetic field.

This field is generated in our planet's inner core,

where huge amounts of molten iron and nickel

move constantly.

Since the compass needle is magnetized,

it is attracted to the pole where the magnetic field is stronger,

which, in this case, is the South Magnetic Pole.

SOUTH MAGNETIC POLE

This may confuse some people,

since the South Magnetic Pole is close to the geographic North Pole,

the one we use in maps.

The compass appears to always point to the North Pole

because it's actually reacting to its neighbor's magnetism,

the South Magnetic Pole.

It's also important to know that magnetic poles aren't fixed.

They shift as time goes by,

and have even been inverted in the past.

The difference between the Earth's magnetic pole

and the geographic pole is called magnetic declination.

The magnetic declination changes over time,

depending on where you are in the planet.

In some places, it can be as much as 20 degrees.

But, Tay, is there anything,

specifically in the Bermuda Triangle, that makes a compass go haywire?

In the Bermuda Triangle?

Apart from the magnetic declination that I mentioned,

science doesn't know of other external factors

capable of making a compass go haywire in that region.

By the way, in the 19th century,

when the Triangle became famous due to the disappearances,

there was no magnetic declination there.

In fact, that was one of the few places on the planet

where the compass needle actually pointed to the cardinal North.