Titanic's mirage, part 1: The enigma of the Arctic High and a cold-water tongue of the Labrador Current
Zinkova, Mila
More than a century after the sinking of the Titanic, scientists and historians are still trying to understand what happened on that fateful night. New hypotheses, including the one that declares a Fata Morgana type mirage was involved in both the collision with the iceberg and the failed communications between the Titanic and the Californian, are being introduced on a regular basis. This article is the first in a four-part series that examines the mirage theory of the Titanic disaster. In this part, a few ways in which a temperature inversion (which is required for a mirage to form) could have developed at the site of the disaster at the time of the collision and subsequent sinking are explored. A high-pressure cell, an icy river of melt-water and the Gulf Stream are all examined as factors that could have contributed to the formation of an inversion. It is demonstrated that the development of a steep temperature inversion at the wreck site, though rather unlikely, cannot be excluded completely.
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