…and then they just disappeared.

The Bermuda Triangle, a mysterious stretch of ocean between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and the tip of Florida, has allegedly, throughout the years, swallowed a horde of unsuspecting ships, planes and people.

Many tales have been told about the vanishings. Aliens captured the humans for research. Some geomagnetic storm confused the pilots’ navigational systems. The lost continent of Atlantis sucked the vessels into its grasp with a mysterious, unidentified force. Better yet, strong vortexes slurped the victims straight into another dimension.

But scientists throughout the years have pointed out that there are plausible explanations for the vanishings, and that the risks of traveling through the Bermuda Triangle are no different than other spots in the ocean. [Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle]

New life has been breathed into one such theory: that the vessels could have easily been overcome by giant and unexpected rogue waves. This hypothesis isn’t new, but a group of U.K. scientists recently discussed the evidence for freak waves and other theories (including the role of human error) in a three-episode documentary series “The Bermuda Triangle Enigma,” produced by the BBC for Channel 5.

“There is no doubt this area is prone to rogue waves,” Simon Boxall, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton and one of the scientists on the team, told Live Science. They are possible “anywhere you get multiple storms coming together.”

Source: The Bermuda Triangle: A Breeding Ground for Rogue Waves or a Pit of Human Mistakes?