Top Ten New Species

Snub-Nosed Monkey

Photograph courtesy Ngwe Lwin

A man displays a new species of snub-nosed monkey—which was killed for food—in Myanmar (Burma) in 2010.
Each May the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University (ASU), along with an international committee of taxonomists, announces its choices for the top ten species that were formally recognized the previous year. Participants draw up their own criteria, and selections can be made based on anything from unique attributes to odd names.
The announcement is timed to celebrate the May 23 birthday of Carolus Linnaeus, who developed the scientific system of plant and animal names more than 250 years ago.
"Unless we put a face on biodiversity by making individual species known and giving them names to celebrate their unique contribution to evolutionary and ecological diversity, we cannot expect people to value them," Quentin Wheeler, director of the ASU institute, said via email. (See pictures of ASU's top ten new species of 2010.)
"Humankind needs to be reminded also that it is but 1 of 12 million living species," Wheeler said.
Scientists first learned of "Snubby," as they nicknamed the new monkey species, from hunters in Myanmar's remote, mountainous Kachin state (map).
Later dubbed Rhinopithecus strykeri, the odd animal has fleshy lips, an upturned nose, and an odd respiratory issue: Rain falling into the monkeys' noses possibly causes the animals to sneeze, so they often spend soggy days with their heads tucked between their knees.

Bonaire Banded Box Jelly

Photograph courtesy Ned DeLoach

Found near the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire, this "strikingly beautiful yet venomous jellyfish" resembles a box kite, with its long, colorful tails, according to ASU.
A teacher participating in a citizen-science project gave the Bonaire banded box jelly the scientific name Tamoya ohboya, under the assumption that people who are stung by the noxious jelly would exclaim, Oh boy!
(Also see "'Pink Meanie' Pictures: New Jellyfish Attacks Other Jellies.")

Wandering Leg Sausage

Image courtesy G. Brovad

At 6.3 inches (16 centimeters) long, the giant millipede Crurifarcimen vagans (pictured) is the biggest millipede yet found.
Discovered in the species-rich Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, the species' size and shape earned it the common name "wandering leg sausage."
(Blog post: "How Millipedes' Legs Become Sex Members.")

Sazima's Tarantula

Photograph courtesy Caroline S. Fukushima

The "breathtakingly beautiful" Sazima's tarantula was found in Bahia, Brazil, according to ASU.
Dubbed Pterinopelma sazimai, the iridescent blue species may be at risk due to habitat loss and harvesting for the pet trade.
The arachnid is especially vulnerable because it lives only on "ecological islands"—a type of habitat in Brazil's tabletop mountains.
(See "Tarantulas Shoot Silk From Feet, Spider-Man Style.")

Night-Blooming Orchid

Image courtesy Jaap Vermeulen

Flowers of the night-blooming orchid (pictured) open around 10 p.m. and close the next morning.
Thought to be the first night-blooming species among the 25,000 known orchids, the plant was named Bulbophyllum nocturnum, in part from the Latin word meaning "at night."
Known from only a single plant found in Papua New Guinea, the night-blooming orchid may be at risk due to habitat loss from logging, according to ASU.
(See "World's Smallest Orchid Discovered [By Accident].")

Walking Cactus

Illustration courtesy Jianni Liu

An ancient, spiny creature nicknamed a walking cactus is seen in an illustration.
Discovered via fossils unearthed in China's Yunnan Province, the 2.4-inch-long (6-centimeter-long) Diania cactiformis had a worm-like body and ten pairs of armored, likely jointed legs.
The animal would have lived about 500 million years ago during a period of rapid evolution called the Cambrian explosion.
(Learn more about prehistoric animals.)

Dive-Bombing Wasp

Photograph courtesy C. van Achterberg

A new species of parasitic wasp found in Europe, Kollasmosoma sentum (pictured), "dive bombs" ants to lay its eggs.
The wasp skims the ground to locate an ant, then drops rapidly and deposits an egg inside the victim, transforming the ant into rations for the wasp larva.
"When ants are aware of the air raid, they may wave away the wasps with their legs or turn with mandibles open to face the assailant," according to ASU.
(See "Pictures: Wasps Turn Ladybugs Into Flailing 'Zombies.'")

Nepalese Autumn Poppy

Photograph courtesy Paul Egan

The "beautiful" Nepalese autumn poppy likely escaped identification for many years due to its extreme high-altitude habitat—nearly 14,000 feet (4,300 meters), according to ASU.
Botanists had collected the flower before in 1962 and 1994 but didn't recognize the species as a new flower.
Last year, though, the discovery "was made by intrepid botanists collecting plants miles from human habitation in heavy monsoon rains," ASU reports.
(See National Geographic's flower pictures.)

Devil Worm

Image courtesy A. G. Borgonie, Ghent University

Discovered miles under Earth's surface, the devil worm (pictured) is the deepest-living animal yet found.
Though "admittedly the least photogenic of the lot," the devil worm "was most surprising," ASU's Wheeler said.
"I do not think anyone expected to find a multicellular organism living nearly a mile underground," he said.
"Discovery of this nematode raises the obvious question: What else do we not know about the biodiversity of the underworld?"
(See "Deepest-Ever Fish Caught Alive on Camera.")

Spongebob Squarepants Mushroom

Photograph courtesy Thomas Bruns

The new species Spongiforma squarepantsii has a spongy appearance that reminded scientists of the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants.
Found in Sarawak, Malaysia, S. squarepantsii looks more like a sponge than a mushroom, and when squeezed like a sponge, it will bounce back to its normal size and shape, according to ASU.
Overall, "the best guarantee for our own future lies in learning about the rise and fall of other species," ASU's Wheeler added.
"If biodiversity is sustainable, so too, perhaps, are we."

Dormice whiskers aid tree-climbing

By Anna-Louise Taylor BBC Nature

Slow motion footage of a dormouse reveals that it "whisks" as it climbs

Continue reading the main story

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Dormice use their whiskers to help them climb trees, researchers say.

By twitching them upwards, outwards and straight ahead up to 25 times a second, they sense where they are going, a University of Sheffield team has found.
The process, called whisking, is used by some other rodents, and by whiskered mammals including seals and walruses.
Dr Robyn Grant, from the university's Active Touch Laboratory says whisking is "a parallel sense to our sense of touch".
She says hazel dormice (Muscardinus avellanarius) use their whiskers, or vibrissae, in a similar way to how people use their eyes - scanning to recognise what is in front of them.

Continue reading the main story

Find out more

• Dormice may spend up to 75% of their life asleep
• Hazel dormice (Muscardinus avellanarius) numbers dropped by about 50% in the 20th Century
• Hazel dormice live for up to five years, hibernating on the ground in the winter
• They build their summer nests in tree holes or thick bramble and stay living in trees while it's warm
• The species is vulnerable to changes in habitat such as loss of hedgerows, altered farming practices and fragmentation of woodlands.

Watch: Why Bill Oddie loves dormice
Dormice hunting for 'tiny biscuits' in oak trees
See a dormouse waking up after winter
How a hazel dormouse fattens up
Watch more on BBC Two's Springwatch at 20:00 BST or join the conversation on twitter.

"Because of the uneven surface on branches, they vibrate them to find where to put their feet, as well as to work out where there's a gap and where to change branches," says Dr Grant.

Dormice are endangered in the UK and hibernate most of the year in small nests on the ground, but in the summer they live in trees.
Dr Grant says that they can also use the sensory nodes in their whisker follicles, which respond to the vibrations of their whiskers. This helps them to locate and determine the size, shape and quality of a food item, or to sense their way home.
The research by the team at the Active Touch Laboratory (ATL@S) is working to compare how a number animals, including opossums, seals and other rodents, move and use their whiskers in a sensory way.
Dr Grant says there are differences in how each species moves its whiskers. Different animals twitch at a different frequency, for example, and most rodents generally whisk their whiskers just backwards and forwards.
"We really want to try to classify strategies common between different animals, looking at whether all climbers use whiskers this way," says Dr says Prof Grant.
"And [we want to] use their different experiences in whisking to try and explore the evolution of their sensing systems."
By using an infrared lightbox, they were able to film nocturnal animals in the dark.
The team recorded the movements of whiskers using a high-speed video camera, which films at 500 frames per second, enabling the researchers to play back the whiskers' movements in slow-motion.
Using this high-speed digital videography, the team has examined whisker movements of nine species of British rodent.
They studied wood, harvest, yellow-necked and house mice; field, bank and water voles; brown rats; hazel dormice and one non-rodent - the water shrew.
The team then used "automatic whisker tracker" computer software to analyse the movements recorded on the video, and obtain data that they could compare.
Dr Grant says the rodents all showed whisking that was similar to rats and mice, but the water shrew did not. This indicated that the dormouse family (Gliridae) shared a common ancestor with other rodents.
She added that previous "whisker research" may have involved animals' whiskers being trimmed off. Without whiskers dormice cannot walk well; they fall off ledges and cannot cross gaps.

Magma Rise Sparked Life as We Know It?

Shift in planet's volcanoes flooded Earth with oxygen, study says.

Lava flows from Kilauea volcano on Hawaii (file picture).

Ron Dahlquist

Ken Croswell

Oxygen-breathing life exists on Earth today because of changes in the planet's magma 2.5 billion years ago, two geologists say.
Oxygen currently makes up 21 percent of our atmosphere. But for the first half of Earth's existence, the air had almost no oxygen—if any humans could travel back to that ancient environment, they'd need spacesuits to survive.
Mysteriously, bacteria such as blue-green algae—which produce oxygen through photosynthesis—had existed for several hundred million years before oxygen finally managed to enrich the air during a period called the Great Oxidation Event.
(Also see "Nickel 'Famine' Led to Oxygen-Breathing Life?")
Now, a new study of 70,000 rock samples from around the world may have solved the mystery of oxygen's long delay.
The rocks show a dramatic change in Earth's magma composition at the end of the Archean, which lasted from 4 to 2.5 billion years ago. (Explore a prehistoric time line.)
"This was actually somewhat unexpected to us," said study co-author C. Brenhin Keller of Princeton University.
That's because the discovery implies magma formed at greater depths during the Archean than it has anytime since.
Magma Gases Sopping Up Oxygen
Keller and his co-author Blair Schoene, also of Princeton, speculate that the change in where magma forms triggered the different chemical compositions seen in their rock samples.
Importantly, the scientists propose, such a shift could have altered the balance of iron in magma from ferrous to ferric—versions of the element that react differently with oxygen.
When volcanoes were producing magma with ferrous iron, they emitted gases that readily sopped up atmospheric oxygen, Keller said.
By contrast, when volcanoes started spewing magma with ferric iron, the gases consumed less oxygen, and photosynthesis was able to enrich the air with the element, the thinking goes.
(Related: "Saturn Moon Has Oxygen Atmosphere.")
William White of Cornell University reviewed the paper for publication but was not involved in the study. He notes that the newfound change in magma composition occurred around the same time as the rise of oxygen.
"I suspect that this isn't coincidental," he said, echoing the study's conclusions.
Some two billion years later, Earth's oxygen-rich air allowed animals—including humans—to emerge and thrive. What's more, the freshly abundant element gave rise to our planet's protective ozone layer, which shields surface life from damaging solar radiation.
(Also see "Oxygen-Free Animals Discovered—A First.")
First, though, the rise of oxygen subjected our planet to a mid-life crisis: Oxygen readily reacts with methane, a greenhouse gas that had been warming the world before the oxidation event.
With a drop in atmospheric methane, Earth and its inhabitants suffered the planet's first major ice age.
The ancient change in Earth's magma is described in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

Evolutionary Flop: Early 4-Footed Land Animal Was No Walker?

3-D model suggests dog-size animal's hind limbs were largely useless on land.

An artist's rendering turns Ichthyostega's skin translucent to show fossils scanned for a new study.

Illustration courtesy Julia Molnar

Dave Mosher

for National Geographic News

Published May 23, 2012

One of Earth's earliest four-footed land animals couldn't walk, a new 3-D model suggests.

Instead, the dog-size Ichthyostega likely flopped on land, using only two of its four stubby legs for locomotion.
(Pictures: "From Fins to Wings" in National Geographic magazine.)
One of our most distant ancestors, Ichthyostega is also one of the earliest tetrapods known to have crept onto land.
Until recently, researchers thought the creature squiggled across the mud on all fours like a salamander. But the first 3-D digital reconstructions of Ichthyostega's skeleton suggest its forearms couldn't twist and turn enough to enable a four-legged gait.
The model also suggests that the creature's hind legs barely touched the ground. At best, they may have propped up Ichthyostega's rump as the animal flopped around like a modern-day mudskipper fish.
Video: Mudskipper Fish in Action


"When Ichthyostega fossils were first being found in Greenland in the 1920s, the natural assumption was that something with four limbs with digits could walk," said paleontologist Stephanie Pierce, of the Royal Veterinary College in London.
"But now we have more fossil specimens, more species, and more tools," said Pierce, who co-authored the new Ichthyostega study, published May 23 by the journal Nature.
"We definitely know that they were moving more like a mudskipper than [like] modern tetrapods."
(Related: "'Frog-amander' Fossil May Be Amphibian Missing Link.")
"Magic" Fossils
Four-limbed land animals with skeletons first arose in the water, scientists think. Only after millions of years of evolutionary change did they hit the beach during the Devonian period (prehistoric time line).
The earliest signs of their transition from swimming to walking are fossilized tracks that date back about 390 million years—about 30 million years before than the first evidence of Ichthyostega.
To see how Ichthyostega might have made tracks, Pierce and her colleagues built a 3-D computer model by scanning a remarkably complete fossil from Greenland dubbed "Mr. Magic." Missing parts were filled in with scans of fossil bones from 12 other Ichthyostega specimens.
For comparison, the team also scanned and modeled the skeletons of a modern crocodile, otter, seal, platypus, and salamander.
"We moved the animals in a controlled way in the model, and Ichthyostega seemed to be very different from its modern counterparts," Pierce said. "This really highlighted the fact that Ichthyostega must have been doing something different with its legs. The question is, what?"
(Also see "Fossil Fish With 'Limbs' Is Missing Link, Study Says.")
More Like a Mudskipper
Further analysis hinted that Ichthyostega had very limited forearm motion and a stiff spine. The model also suggested that the hind limbs couldn't contribute to a forward-propelling, four-legged gait.
Instead, Pierce and her colleagues concluded, Ichthyostega likely "rowed" its forelimbs front-to-back, much as a mudskipper moves its stubby front fins to slide around in the muck.
Per Ahlberg, a paleontologist at Uppsala University who calls Ichthyostega "a close friend," said Pierce and her colleagues' work is the first and most thorough of its kind for animals transitioning from water to land.
"This is a really valuable, proper 3-D reconstruction of a Devonian tetrapod and an early land vertebrate," said Ahlberg, who wasn't involved in the study.
One item Ahlberg took issue with in the study, however, is the notion that Ichthyostega didn't do much with its hindquarters.
"There would have been a lot of muscle attachments there, and the pelvis is very large," especially compared with a fish pelvis, he said. That pelvis "had to be doing something significant or it wouldn't be there—the evolutionary cost is too large."
Pierce's team contends, however, that the hind limbs and pelvis were used more in swimming and paddling—Ichthyostega's primary means of motion, the team believes. Uppsala's Ahlberg added, "I bet Ichthyostega's stiff spine made it look bizarre when it was swimming. Sort of like a windup fish toy that you put in a bathtub."
Next, Pierce and her colleagues intend to perform nuanced calculations on the spine and reconstruct a full, lifelike model of movement for the ancient creature.
"The land was an open ecological niche, free to be exploited, and these early tetrapods knew what to do. It was theirs for the taking," Pierce said. "We want to see how they navigated this new environment."

Prehistoric "Panda" Found in Spain—Giant Panda Has European Roots?

Small tree-climber is oldest known panda relative.

 

A prehistoric relative of the giant panda has been discovered in Spain, a new study says—which suggests that the charismatic Chinese bears might have originated in Europe.
The 11-million-year-old species, dubbed Agriarctos beatrix, lived in humid forests in what's now Spain, according to scientists who recently found the animal's fossil teeth near the city of Zaragoza (map).
The teeth give paleontologists a lot of information about a species, according to study leader Juan Abella, a paleobiologist at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, Spain.
"For example, all bear [teeth] have a series of characters that tell us that they are bears. And the same thing happens with dogs, cats, deer, or other vertebrate groups," Abella said via email.
After analyzing the fossil teeth, he added, the researchers "concluded that they belong to the bear family, and more precisely to the giant panda's subfamily."
And the subfamily resemblance may have been striking—Abella and colleagues speculate that the bear had panda-like patterns, because most existing species in the family also have the characteristic dark and white patches.
(See "Biggest Bear Ever Found—'It Blew My Mind,' Expert Says.")
New Bear Points to European Panda Origins?
But A. beatrix was not your average bear.
For one thing, the 130-pound (60-kilogram) animal was even smaller the smallest modern-day bear species, the sun bear—so it probably wasn't exactly the top hunter of prehistoric Europe.
Like current pandas and small bears, the newfound species may have scrambled up trees to escape big predators of the day, such as bear dogs—extinct, doglike carnivores—and saber-toothed, feline-like creatures called Barbourofelidae, the team speculated.
For another thing, A. beatrix is the oldest known species in the subfamily Ailuropodinae, which includes the giant panda.
"Therefore, the origin of this group is not located in China, where the [giant panda] species lives, but in the warm and humid regions of [southwestern] Europe," Abella said.
But Blaine Schubert, a paleontologist at East Tennessee State University who has studied prehistoric bears, said such a claim "seems fairly speculative."
The new study "doesn't say that this is evidence that panda bears may have originated in Europe," said Schubert, who was not involved in the study.
"Further, even if this new fossil is a relative of modern pandas, it doesn't mean that pandas originated there. I would not suggest this based on the evidence and I wouldn't want to make a claim like that without a lot more evidence."
Giant Panda Ancestors Trekked to China?
If giant panda ancestors did come from Spain, how did they get to China?
Previous research suggests bears generally are "able to disperse quite easily if the environmental conditions were favorable for them," Abella said. At the time, southwestern Europe was warm and humid—good conditions for starting out, he said.
The bears also likely migrated mostly on land—one potential barrier, an ancient European sea called Parathetys, was already shrinking by A. beatrix's time, he said.
As for whether A. beatrix itself made it to China, "we don't really know. But no fossil remains of this species have been found outside Spain."
Abella next hopes to unearth an A. beatrix skeleton, which would reveal more about the how the bear lived and moved. (See: "Ancient Bear DNA Mapped—A First for Extinct Species.")
It's unknown whether such a skeleton exists, but the team working with the Institut Català de Paleontologia in Barcelona to excavate "very rich and interesting" fossil beds, Abella said. These fossil beds could conceivably contain A. beatrix remains, since the beds are about as old as those A. beatrix teeth.
"Until we [find] more remains of this species," he said, "we can not give much more information."
The panda-relative study was published in the most recent edition of the journal Estudios Geológicos.

New Planet Found in Our Solar System?

Odd orbits of remote objects hint at unseen world, new calculations suggest.

Artist's conception of a small icy object beyond Pluto (file picture).

Illustration courtesy G. Bacon, STScI/NASA

Richard A. Lovett in Timberline Lodge, Oregon

for National Geographic News

Published May 11, 2012

An as yet undiscovered planet might be orbiting at the dark fringes of the solar system, according to new research.
Too far out to be easily spotted by telescopes, the potential unseen planet appears to be making its presence felt by disturbing the orbits of so-called Kuiper belt objects, said Rodney Gomes, an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.
Kuiper belt objects are small icy bodies—including some dwarf planets—that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune.
Once considered the ninth planet in our system, the dwarf planet Pluto, for example, is one of the largest Kuiper belt objects, at about 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) wide. Dozens of the other objects are hundreds of miles across, and more are being discovered every year.
(See "Three New 'Plutos'? Possible Dwarf Planets Found.")
What's intriguing, Gomes said, is that, according to his new calculations, about a half dozen Kuiper belt objects—including the remote body known as Sedna—are in strange orbits compared to where they should be, based on existing solar system models. (Related: "Pluto Neighbor Gets Downsized.")
The objects' unexpected orbits have a few possible explanations, said Gomes, who presented his findings Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Timberline Lodge, Oregon.
"But I think the easiest one is a planetary-mass solar companion"—a planet that orbits very far out from the sun but that's massive enough to be having gravitational effects on Kuiper belt objects.
Mystery Planet a Captured Rogue?
For the new work, Gomes analyzed the orbits of 92 Kuiper belt objects, then compared his results to computer models of how the bodies should be distributed, with and without an additional planet.
If there's no distant world, Gomes concludes, the models don't produce the highly elongated orbits we see for six of the objects.
How big exactly the planetary body might be isn't clear, but there are a lot of possibilities, Gomes added.
Based on his calculations, Gomes thinks a Neptune-size world, about four times bigger than Earth, orbiting 140 billion miles (225 billion kilometers) away from the sun—about 1,500 times farther than Earth—would do the trick.
But so would a Mars-size object—roughly half Earth's size—in a highly elongated orbit that would occasionally bring the body sweeping to within 5 billion miles (8 billion kilometers) of the sun.
Gomes speculates that the mystery object could be a rogue planet that was kicked out of its own star system and later captured by the sun's gravity. (See "'Nomad' Planets More Common Than Thought, May Orbit Black Holes.")
Or the putative planet could have formed closer to our sun, only to be cast outward by gravitational encounters with other planets.
However, actually finding such a world would be a challenge.
To begin with, the planet might be pretty dim. Also, Gomes's simulations don't give astronomers any clue as to where to point their telescopes—"it can be anywhere," he said.
No Smoking Gun
Other astronomers are intrigued but say they'll want a lot more proof before they're willing to agree that the solar system—again—has nine planets. (Also see "Record Nine-Planet Star System Discovered?")
"Obviously, finding another planet in the solar system is a big deal," said Rory Barnes, an astronomer at the University of Washington. But, he added, "I don't think he really has any evidence that suggests it is out there."
Instead, he added, Gomes "has laid out a way to determine how such a planet could sculpt parts of our solar system. So while, yes, the evidence doesn't exist yet, I thought the bigger point was that he showed us that there are ways to find that evidence."
Douglas Hamilton, an astronomer from the University of Maryland, agrees that the new findings are far from definitive.
"What he showed in his probability arguments is that it's slightly more likely. He doesn't have a smoking gun yet."
And Hal Levison, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, says he isn't sure what to make of Gomes's finding.
"It seems surprising to me that a [solar] companion as small as Neptune could have the effect he sees," Levison said.
But "I know Rodney, and I'm sure he did the calculations right."

Revealed the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle?
 
PERHAPS you are already familiar with a place that is considered the most mysterious of the earth, the Bermuda Triangle. Many mysterious stories that emerge from these places, for example the story about the loss of the ship and its entire crew when sailing in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle.
The ship listed missing among other things, to April 1925. Raifuku freighter ships from Japanese Maru sank after sending the message:'' Looks like a giant knife thing! Hurry, please! We can not escape!'' But the ship was no longer hopeless, lost without trace with all hands.
In December 1961, the Southern Isles tanker suffered a similar fate. When he was sailing in a convoy of a sudden he disappeared. The only other ship that saw a small light that is considered as the light left by the sunken ship. Subsequently, in December 1964, twin tankers, Southern District also drowned in a similar way. It disappeared without leaving a mark SOS when sailing across the region north to South Carolina.
Listed above only events that stand out. Though there are many small boats are missing. Even the aircraft had come to be a victim. On December 5, 1945 recorded five torpedo launcher peasawat TMB-3 Avenger Grumman disappeared. Before it lost contact, they claimed not to know the direction. Though the flight commander, Lt. Charles Taylor has picked up the Air 2500 flight hours. So he's not inexperienced pilots. In fact, sent a rescue plane was lost.
Why the Triangle?
The loss of ships and aircraft in waters around it are being taken seriously by scientists. No one would dare try to pass through the area. Since the horrific events occur, people began to name the area as'' Satan'' or'' Triangle Devil's Triangle''. While the word triangle derived from the projected points on the map, shaped like a triangular geometry, the location of the Bermuda Islands, Puerto Rico and Florida. All located in the Atlantic Ocean region covering 1.5 million square miles or 4 million square kilometers.
According to the book The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berfilz published by Doubleday & Co. New York (1974), noted that ships and aircraft lost was attacked by some sort of alien, aka ETI / Exstra Terrestrial Intelegency, that intelligent beings from outer space who ride the white glowing flying saucer . So the white light seen by the victim before losing contact is light flying saucer aliens known as the UFO (Unidentified Flying Object).
Or there are more scientists who say that the planes and ships were sucked into the hole passage of time, such as the loss of all materials when entering into a black hole (black hole).
According to Bill Dilon of the U.S. Geological Survey, Woods Hole Field Center, some of the victims before losing contact there is always describe a white light flashing is a possibility that methane gas spray of the water. Such bursts of water to a boil caused by methane gas that is heated in the sea. Events similar to events in the oil drilling rig in the Caspian Sea that claimed many victims.
Keep in mind, in the Bermuda Triangle are mine methane. Well, if you come out when the sea floor is cracked or deformed, then the gas will push sea water up. Encouragement was not half-hearted, strong bursts of water and boil the sea. So the aircraft can be affected by semburannya.
Another theory as the cause of the loss of an aircraft in that area is the destruction of the compass. Because the crew so do not know his position, then spinning them until the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea and disappeared in the waves swallow. Because they would compass the destruction of the magnetic field.
Not Superstition
Although it can not be explained clearly what damage the magnetic compass, Prof. John Surya PhD, Indonesia's leading physicists, agree with foreign writers Larry Kusche in his book The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved. As written in the book, that the loss of ships in the Bermuda triangle can be explained scientifically and rationally. Some are due to accidents, bad weather, running out of fuel and so on. So, we do not need to explain the weird and superstitious.
Bermuda Triangle mystery has been revealed otherwise. According to scientists, the Bermuda Triangle is a common phenomenon of acute gas, natural gas, as gas is produced by boiling water, mainly methane gas, which is the main cause behind the loss of several aircraft and ships. Evidence of discovery that brings a new perspective on the mystery that has haunted the world for many years was contained in the report of the American Journal of Physics. Professor Joseph Monaghan examined the hypothesis that accompanied by David May at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Two hypotheses of the study were giant balloons methane gas out of the ocean floor that causes most, if not all, mysterious accidents at that location. (24)