"Electronic Fog"

“Electronic Fog”

It is implicit in the term “comparative analysis” that one has data to compare. The personal experience of one person is relevant only in the parameters of being an eyewitness to an event or experience. However, when placed together the experience and encounters of many people comprise a large and impressive body of circumstantial evidence. It is collective knowledge and experience which make the footsteps of logic. And logic is the glue that builds facts into science.
   In no other area has the Bermuda Triangle excited popular opinion than in the area of “electronic fog.” This is because numerous independent witnesses have shown us it is real. The term was coined by pilot and commercial real estate agent Bruce Gernon, who survived two encounters with it, the first in 1970 and the second in 1996. The expression first found its way to the public via this web site, thanks to Bruce giving his account here. Then through both Bruce and my appearances on TV, my book Into the Bermuda Triangle and then Bruce’s (and Rob MacGregor’s) book The Fog.
   Although I have spoken of it in more detail in my book, surprisingly, I never devoted an article to it on my web site. So this here is designed to fill that unpardonable gap.
   What exactly is the “electronic fog” and what is its potential? First, the “electronic fog” is real. Its origins, however, are unproven. It is a meteorological phenomenon that is somehow tied into an electromagnetic phenomenon. I say this because the electronic fog does indeed “cling” to an aircraft or ship. From the vantage point of the pilot within the cockpit, it seems as if he/she is flying through a fog bank. But this is untrue. The truth is the fog is flying with you. So far, for the record, Charles Lindbergh is the first to mention the phenomenon. Not so surprisingly he does not attribute his encounter to a mass of charged vapor surrounding his aircraft. But he does faithfully discuss his encounter in his book Autobiography of Values.
   Bruce Gernon, a calm, observant pilot, was the first to put it together. After he survived his first encounter he considered and reconsidered all he had gone through. And it is because of his encounters that we know the electronic fog does not completely shroud an aircraft. It is, to an extent, circling around the aircraft so that the aircraft is in a doughnut-like void. This was independently confirmed by maverick pilot Martin Caidin when he and several of his companions experienced it for some 4 hours on a flight from Bermuda to Jacksonville in June 1986. Please consult their accounts online here at They Lived To Tell.
   But for this article let’s condense what the eyewitnesses described. The electronic fog is a grayish to eggnog colored “mist” or “fog.” It is often so tightly wrapped around the aircraft that one has to look straight down or straight up to see the sea or the sky. This establishes that the electronic fog is the condensation of a vortex around these aircraft. An electromagnetic vortex (used in a loose and not scientific sense) would explain why the fog can cling to the aircraft and “fly with it.” This is at a stark contrast to a “sonic fog.” Some aircraft traveling beyond mach 1 can condense the atmosphere around them in the right meteorological conditions. This harmless vapor looks like a giant cotton ball that puffs quickly away in the jet’s wake. .
   On the other hand, the electronic fog can be nasty. Pilots report that their electronic equipment fritzes. Their compasses spin, the loran won’t work, digital readouts go haywire. Nothing works, but they have power.
   These effects are, of course, the genuine enigma of the Bermuda Triangle. One of the first things early researchers discovered when delving into the mystery of the area’s high ratio of disappearances was the reports that weird electronic and navigational quirks from those who had survived strange encounters. Disappearances took on a sinister or at least exciting aura because of these reports. This, more than the excessive number of disappearances, is what has maintained the lore of the Bermuda Triangle. These unexplained electromagnetic incidents always underscored the popular belief that something just wasn’t right in the area.
   Electronic fog has become such an interest now, 50 years into “Bermuda Triangle reality, for this very reason; because it could just be a tangle proof to the hitherto “legendary” enigma of the area. It could be the actual incarnation of the famous electromagnetic aberrations and anomalies for which the area has been known. And by incarnation I mean the creating of a visible “body” to the spirit of the mythos. To an extent the electronic fog is proof that there is something very unique in the Triangle that is related to as-yet understood aberrations of electromagnetic energy. And this, naturally, causes us to wonder if it is connected to the high proportion of disappearances.
   Electronic fog might not be the cause of every “wacky compass” report, but it is a visible testimonial to an underlying problem in the area.
   So far, nothing can account for the reports. No known meteorological cross-reference exists. But some meteorologists take it seriously. David Pares of the University of Nebraska has been studying its possibility. This is not merely based on reports from pilots and shipmasters. There was the accidental discovery made by Canadian lay physicist John Hutchison. During high voltage electrical tests of his “Hutchison Effect” he produced a silver metallic cloud that couldn’t be seen through in his lab.
   Closer to the field is the work of Russian physicist Dr. Oleg Meshcheryakov, who has studied ball lightning in an attempt to explain its origins. He has even taken some surprising pictures of his own attempts to produce charged atmospheric phenomena.

I shared with Dr. Meshcheryakov and some electronic experts the 1904 account of the ship Mohican north of the Triangle. It experienced a strange lenticular cloud and some very bizarre effects beyond what static electricity is capable. It inspired some heated disagreement, but in the end the incident adds to the overall enigma of the Bermuda Triangle.
   Is the electronic fog one manifestation of electromagnetic problems in the area? If so, is the event which happened to the Mohican in 1904 simply a more severe example? Or is the electronic fog merely the residue of such severe aberrations?
   What is the electronic fog capable of? I have frequently cited the tragic case of Gary Purvis. In 2001 he was playing tag with a Coast Guard interceptor. The purpose of the maneuver was to help train the CG in drug interception. Then the incident began. Near Marathon in the Florida Keys Purvis suddenly announced he was IMC. This stands for Instrument Meteorological Conditions. He was flying on instruments rather than by point of sight. Yet how was this possible? The weather in the area was beautiful. The Marathon weather reporting station confirmed 12 miles visibility, as did the CG interceptor.
   Then Purvis vanished. In his case, wreckage was later found. It was thought he got spatially disoriented and crashed into the sea. Tragic, of course; and this could be the answer. But what so overwhelmed his aircraft in only his immediate location so that he had to fly on instrument orientation?
   Spatial disorientation and panic are all possible results of the electronic fog. But if accident is the result, why does disappearance and not debris field predominate in the Bermuda Triangle, even over shallow water?

What is the potential of this presumed “underlying magnetic problem” that creates the electronic fog? Obviously, it has degrees of severity or, more accurately, it manifests itself in degrees of severity. No one yet knows. But it is something that must be discovered. One thing is certain, the Triangle’s notorious enigma of strange fogs and vapors, weird auras and electromagnetic aberrations (wacky compasses, fritzed electronics) is quite real.
   Is the rest real? Such as? Time anomalies, for instance. We know how to “warp time.” But “time warp” that is a terrible misnomer. We know how to slow time. Yet we do not slow time. We know how the bending of space can “slow time” within its curvature. Time continues on at its normal rate outside the field. But within the field things are simply at a different speed and, well, time.
   That took too much time to tell, and it really didn’t explain it! The spaceship to Sirius is probably the best analogy. The star Sirius is 9 light years away. In other words, it is the distance from Earth that it would take light traveling at 186,284 miles per second to reach in 9 of our years. That’s a huge distance. If we could travel at the speed of light it would still take us 18 years to make a round trip to Sirius. Who wants to spend that kind of time? Nobody!
   But something surprising and disheartening would have been discovered had we tried. Fortunately, Einstein and Relativity have prepared us with a foretaste. Had Relativity not surprised us the astronauts who flew to Sirius and back would have arrived here ready for a healthy dinner, but they would have been shocked to see that although they hadn’t aged a day the Earth and all on it are 18 years older.
   Why?
   Because time is not a dimension. It is not the 4th dimension of popular discourse. Time is a progression within our 3 dimensions. We move. All of our atoms move. Our biological processes continue on. Physical process continue on in nature, building, decaying, interacting. But we are all moving. The Universe is moving. The Earth is hurling through space. But in a more real sense we all move in the sense of tempo. All elements are parts in a vast mechanical clock. We are all geared to it. We are made out of the same atoms as everything else. Thus we are not aware of this massive tempo. We are not aware of the Earth’s incredible speed around the Sun because, well, we say “gravity.” But gravity is a nebulous thing we don’t understand either. It is not an attracting force. Magnetism is an attracting force. But gravity is an orienting force. Yet we don’t really know what this entails.
   In any case, any physicist will tell you we are unaware the Earth is round and that it is speeding through space or rotating at 1,000 miles per hour (at the equator) because of gravity. We move with the load. Everything is set in tempo.
   Let’s picture an ant in a bubble. It floats peacefully within that bubble. But accelerate that bubble to 1,000 mph and that ant will be killed by the G forces. But accelerate that ant 1,000 mph within the bubble and he is unaware of the vast speeds of that bubble.
   That is the Universe. That is the Earth. That is us on this Earth. That really is Time. It is nothing really but the rate at which things grow, decay and move about. We say “Time.” It’s a measurement for life and existence. It isn’t a substance to be measured. It is the tempo at which we are all set.
   But it would be wrong to say that “time” is just a mental concept or point of reference. It is bound to that tempo because we are and we age and measure according to the flow ofd things. It has something to do with gravity and, very definitely, mass. This planet, by its great mass and speed in space, actually curves space around it slightly. Atomic clocks have confirmed this. Those set at sea level and those set at orbital heights show “time” passes slightly more slowly at sea level. The difference is that this is closer to the center of gravity and within the field of curving space around the Earth.
   Einstein proposed it all in his Theory of Relativity. The idea that speed would also increase mass was confirmed in the first cyclotron at UCLA. When subatomic particles were spun in magnetic fields to approach near to the speed of light, their mass increased. Einstein was right.
   Thus those astronauts on their way to Sirius would have created their own problem. At light speed that spaceship, like this planet, would have bent space around it. Only at those phenomenal speeds it really would have curved space, far more than our Earth can do revolving around the Sun at only around 68,000 mph. The result of bending space would have reset the tempo upon which all inside lived. None would have been aware of it. They were within this curvature of space. Thus like the ant in the bubble they moved relative to the speeds of all around them. All was stationary. All normal life continued.
   Yet in our normal curvature of space in our solar system and Universe, all was normal too. We continued on. Life goes on. For us 18 years elapsed. The spaceship came back from Sirius. To them they were gone a day. But the astronauts, had they 4 year old children when they left would have been greeted by 22 year old young men and women. The astronauts, you see, did not go into the future. The future simply continued to tick by them, as they were held in a much slower tempo due to the bending of space. One does not travel in time. Time travels with one, but at the appropriate tempo of mass and curving space.
   Thank God the knowledge of Relativity has helped us prevent this surprise.
   The popular forum, however, has made a quagmire out of it. Time is believed to be a dimension. This cannot be the case. Time is relative to the bending of space because somehow, in someway related to that mystery we call gravity, that orienting force can set and re-set the tempo of all things. But the space that is bending round that spaceship to Sirius is our space. If at the speed of light that spaceship went through my house it would not be in another dimension. It would rip through it, and I would be left like a cartoon figure typing this right now and wondering where my walls obliterated to! In fact, I would not be alive. My house would, of course, be a debris field.
   This is borne out by the cyclotron tests as well. The subatomic particles, though spun at near the speeds of light, still bombarded the the uranium. They impacted. They still split the atom. They were not in another dimension. They did not pass through. The spaceship to Sirius analogy is simply the same thing on a bigger scale. It would not “bend” me out of the way and pass through harmless. Time is not a dimension, but a progression within the 3 dimensions.
   But is it possible to bend space in the opposite direction? Is it possible to be on an “anti-curve” of advancing bending space and experience a tempo that is faster than our normal Universal “time clock?”
   This question is more shaky and theoretical than slowing the tempo of all things by bending space. But bending space tells us one thing. Time and being are on a tempo that is relative to mass and that unknown force of gravity. Can that be messed around with? Can messing with electromagnetism, the energy of mass, do it? Can some other way beside the massive speed of an object bend space in a location and thereby slow or speed the tempo of all within its field?
   Time is indeed relative. But it needs space and it needs mass. And we know all this is around us. Can we artificially manipulate space? We are learning what time warps are really possible. One day we will understand Time and Space and how to harness the interrelationship . . .and perhaps even overcome it. Time warps are not so much science fiction. Time, Space and Mass exist. As such they can be understood, conquered and harnessed. We may never be able to move in time, but one day we can take time with us at our desired speed.