From LONDON: The moon played a key role in sinking luxury passenger liner Titanic, which went down in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912 after hitting an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, say astronomers.
An international team led by the Texas State University says that the iceberg that sank theTitanic was actually sent on its deadly path by the closest approach of the moon to the Earth in 1,400 years, the Daily Mail reported.
It was the once-in-a-lifetime lunar event that created a super-high tide on January 12, 1912 - setting loose a deadly fleet of icebergs, three months before the Titanic sank on April 14, 1912 with the loss of some 1,500 lives.
The tide dislodged icebergs off the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, filling shipping lanes with icebergs. The ice field in the area the Titanic sank was so thick with icebergs that rescue ships were forced to slow down, say the astronomers.
"The event on January 4 was the closest approach of the moon to the Earth in more than 1,400 years, and it maximized the moon's tide-raising forces on Earth's oceans. That's remarkable," said team leader Donald Olson.
Normally, icebergs remain in place and cannot resume moving southward until they've melted enough to refloat or a high enough tide frees them. An iceberg can become stuck multiple times on its journey, a process that can take several years.
"As icebergs travel south, they often drift into shallow water. But an extremely high spring tide could refloat them. That could explain the abundant icebergs in the spring of 1912. We don't claim to know exactly where the Titanic iceberg was in January 1912 - nobody can know that - but this is a plausible scenario.
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