September, 2024
A team of Dutch researchers has discovered unusual deep-sea waves that can become four times steeper than thought. The research by scientists including those from TU Delft proves the existence of mysterious monster waves that swallowed ships in the past.
A Delft researcher and his colleagues in Edinburgh and Oxford succeeded in mimicking such an unusual wave in a laboratory for the first time in 2018. In this way, the scientists were able to study such a monster wave.
The special thing about these mega waves is that they do not break at the same time that ordinary waves do. This is because of the way the monster waves are created. A characteristic of these so-called rogue waves is that they usually appear or arise without warning.
“The waves most people know from the beach roll forward,” explains researcher Ton van den Bremer. “The type of wave we studied occurs on open water and occurs when waves from multiple directions converge.” The water is pushed up so that the wave “stands up.
When this happens, the monster waves can lift ships meters high. For a long time it was thought that these waves did not exist and were made up for mythological stories. But research shows they really do exist.
In 1995, the first such large wave was observed and documented from the Draupner platform in the North Sea. This observation made researchers curious about the monster waves.
The researchers published their findings in the scientific journal Nature and on the TU Delft website.