An extremely rare lunar event on the night of Jan. 4, 1912, may have set in motion history's most infamous iceberg: the one that, three and a half months later, would collide with the Titanic, plunging the ship along with 1,500 passengers and crew into the icy waters of the North Atlantic.
That's the argument from a pair of astronomers at Texas State University, anyway. Other scientists believe the researchers' case against the moon is weak.
Astronomers David Olson and Russell Doescher say
they have discovered that a "supermoon" event coincided with spring tide and Earth's perihelion (the point where it is nearest the sun) on or around the same January night one century ago. Together, these events caused extreme tides that could have dislodged icebergs and flung them into southbound ocean currents. By Apr. 14, one of these bergs could have dipped just south of Newfoundland, right in time to intercept the Titanic's maiden voyage.
Though the ultimate cause of the deadly shipwreck was the failure of the Titanic crew to respond to warning messages about the icy conditions that night, "the lunar connection may explain how an unusually large number of icebergs got into the path of the Titanic," Olson said.
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