泰坦尼克號沉沒新說 或因海市蜃樓

After an entire century that included two high-profile government investigations and countless books and movies, we're still debating what really caused the Titanic to hit an iceberg and sink on that crystal-clear chilly night.

Maybe there's more to blame than human folly and hubris. Maybe we can fault freak atmospheric conditions that caused a mirage or an even rarer astronomical event that sent icebergs into shipping lanes. Those are two of the newer theories being proposed by a Titanic author and a team of astronomers.

New theories and research are important "but at its most basic what happened is they failed to heed warnings and they hit the iceberg because they were going too fast," said James Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

One of the novel new theories says Titanic could have been the victim of a mirage that is similar to what people see in the desert. It's the brainchild of Tim Maltin, a historian who has written three books about Titanic.

The unusually cold sea air caused light to bend abnormally downward, Maltin said. The Titanic's first officer, William McMaster Murdoch, saw what he described as a "haze on the horizon, and that iceberg came right out of the haze," Maltin said, quoting from the surviving second officer's testimony.

Other ships, including those rescuing survivors, reported similar strange visuals and had trouble navigating around the icebergs, he said.

British meteorologists later monitored the site for those freaky thermal inversions and said 60 percent of the time they checked, the inversions were present, Maltin said.

The same inversions could have made the Titanic's rescue rockets appear lower in the sky, giving a rescue ship the impression that the Titanic was smaller and farther away, Maltin said.

Physicists Donald Olson and Russell Doescher at Texas State University have another theory in Sky &Telescope magazine that fits nicely with Maltin's. Olson — who often comes up with astronomical quirks linked to historical events — said that a few months earlier, the moon, sun and Earth lined up in a way that added extra pull on Earth's tides. The Earth was closer to the moon than it had been in 1,400 years.

The unusual tides caused glaciers to calve icebergs off Greenland. Those southbound icebergs got stuck near Labrador and Newfoundland but then slowly moved south again, floating into the shipping currents just in time to greet the Titanic, the astronomers theorized. Maltin said the icebergs also added a snaking river of super-cold water that magnified the mirage effect.泰坦尼克號沉沒一百週年之際，我們仍然在討論是什麼原因使它在如此晴朗而寒冷的夜晚撞上了冰山，沉沒海底。這一百年間，關於沉船事故已經進行了兩次知名的政府調查，還有無數的書籍和電影問世。

也許除了人們的愚蠢和傲慢自大，事故還有其它原因。也許我們可以歸罪於反常的大氣狀況導致出現了海市蜃樓，或是更加稀奇的天文現象使得冰山進入了航線。這些是一位泰坦尼克號的作者和幾位天文學家提出的兩種最新理論。

海洋和大氣管理局的海事遺產主管詹姆斯-迪加多說，新的理論和研究很重要，“但發生的最基本的事實是，船員沒能留心警報，而且由於船速過快而撞上了冰山。”

最新的一種理論認爲，泰坦尼克號事故有可能是海市蜃樓導致的，就像人們在沙漠裏看到的那樣。這一理論出自歷史學家蒂姆-馬丁，他已經寫了三本有關泰坦尼克號的著作。

馬丁說，異常寒冷的海洋空氣使得光線反常地向下彎曲。根據倖存的第二副駕駛的證詞，泰坦尼克號的大副威廉-麥克馬斯特-默多克描述稱，他看到了“海平面上的陰霾，而冰山正好從陰霾中出現”。

其它船隻，包括倖存者，也報告稱看到了類似的奇異景象，而且在冰山附近駕駛船隻時感覺難以操縱。

馬丁說，英國氣象學家隨後在該地對這一奇異的逆溫現象進行了監測，結果在60%的監測時間裏，都存在這種逆溫現象。

馬丁還說，這一逆溫現象也使泰坦尼克號發射的遇難信號彈看起來比天空更低，使得救援船隻產生了錯覺，以爲泰坦尼克號體積更小，距離也更遠。

美國德州州立大學的物理學家唐納德-奧森和羅素-多斯徹在《天空與望遠鏡》雜誌上發表了另一種理論，和馬丁的說法恰好吻合。奧森說，事發幾個月前，月亮、太陽和地球的排列方式增大了地球的潮汐力。當時地球和月亮之間的距離是1400年以來的最短距離。奧森經常將歷史事件和天文異象聯繫起來。

這種不尋常的潮汐使得格陵蘭的冰川崩裂成冰山。這些向南漂移的冰山卡在了拉布拉多和紐芬蘭一帶海域，之後再次緩慢南移，漂移到了航流上，正好遇到泰坦尼克號。馬丁表示這些冰山也使海面出現了蜿蜒的超級冰冷的水流，放大了海市蜃樓效應。