What I don’t understand is if they hear a ping signal, which (if legitimate), means they are within a mile from the source, why don’t they “drop anchor” by recording the GPS, then start a submersible search from there? A mile radius is a pinpoint spot location in a vast ocean. Even if you have to crawl along the bottom, searching 3 square miles can’t take that long.
So they want to confirm the signal by detecting it again. That would have been a good idea 3 weeks ago, but with the batteries running out, the first signal may also be the last they’ll ever get. Right now, ANY signal is good, and the only lead we have. Why not exploit it?
I believe the spec says 37.5 KHz ± 1 KHz. The scanner won’t be tuned to so narrow a frequency band.
The 37.5 KHz is chosen, among other factors, to be distinguishable from ambient noise. The pulse is designed to be distinguishable from natural noises. Note also that the pinger is designed to locate the black boxes, and not the wreckage.
The news isn’t discouraging at all, it’s just CNN filler, these things take their time.
Is this a sound, or a radio frequency? Sounds can propagate for more than a hundred miles through the ocean.
The reason they don’t “drop anchor” is that the best way to get the best idea of the source location is to keep moving, know your own location at all times, and take careful bearings of the direction the sound is coming from. You generally need at least two bearings on a source to localize a transmission by triangulation. Given that the bearings will not be precise, the more bearings you get, the better you can pinpoint the location of the source.
I’m not going to try to find the exact news articles, so you’ll have to trust me, but I recall reading recently that due to temperature, age and pressures, the frequency emitted may be as low as 33.3kHz, and the Air France one was at 34. How they determined that, since they never heard the signals, I don’t know.
And it’s unlikely that the black boxes are far from the wreckage.
I’m starting to wonder just how any jumbo jet can disappear so completely. Even if we’re looking in the wrong place, even WAY in the wrong place, if a single piece of debris showed up anywhere, it would make major news no matter who found it, even a thousand miles away from the latest search area.
Therefore, either one piece of debris simply hasn’t been found yet (it’s a big ocean) or somehow the plane or pilot managed to ditch it in such a fashion that it didn’t break up, and sank intact, not even breaking up due to pressure differences during sinking. This suggests controlled flight rather than running out of fuel and falling out of the sky, right?
Any comments on this theory? Or am I guessing much too soon?
There’s no pressure difference. It’s quite difficult to ditch an airplane intact in the best of conditions but it’s within the realm of possibility. If it had empty fuel tanks it can stay afloat for quite a while but eventually it’s going to fill with water and sink. I’m sure this process can be facilitated in a few ways.
It could also have broken up in two or three major pieces and it didn’t create much debris or it wasn’t buoyant or nobody found it yet.
It’s a huge ocean with garbage floating everywhere. Each time the located possible flight 370 debris it turned out to be garbage unrelated to 370. Collecting every piece of garbage in the Indian Ocean is not going to be feasible. I think they are going to stay focused on the possible pings and assume it’s somewhere in that vicinity.
A news report I was only half listening to said they don’t expect to find debris in the new search area (near the pings) because a cyclone passed through a week or so back. Anything floating on the surface would have been disbursed.
Apparently they have briefly reacquired the signals and are using the data to narrow the area. The signals continue to be consistent with a black box but are weakening, possibly due to all the silt on the ocean floor. It sounds like they will be deploying the underwater vehicle soon but are still doing a visual search for the moment.
What would be creepier, finding only the black box from MH370 with no other wreckage, or finding the whole plane down there intact but empty?
[QUOTE=chizzuk;17271211… What would be creepier, finding only the black box from MH370 with no other wreckage, or finding the whole plane down there intact but empty?[/QUOTE]
The creepiest would be to find the plane at the bottom completely intact, with everyone still in their seats and with meals on their plates and cups in their hands.
That’s the spectrum for creepiness? I think finding a relatively intact airplane with everyone strapped on to their seats without lifevests will be far worse.
Whenever I watch one of those forensic investigation documentaries, without fail, one of the investigators will eventually say something along the lines of “It’s a bit like putting together a puzzle, you keep getting these little pieces, and eventually a picture starts to appear”.
Well in this case one picture has been coming together for weeks and while a lot of the details still need to be filled in, a this point it’s pretty clear what it is: It was an intentional act be the pilot*.
It just seems like a lot of people don’t really like that picture so they’re removing pieces or trying to get them to go together in a way the don’t really fit to get something else.
*here “pilot” may mean “guy hired to fly the plane”, or just “guy who was flying the plane”, although it’s more likely the former.
I think this has become the biggest mystery of modern times, beyond even Bermuda Triangle or Amelia Earhart stuff. Can anybody come up with mysteries of a similar magnitude? I mean, we’ve had planes disappear before, but not modern ones, with 200+ people on board, with no distress signal, in clear weather, and the disappearance only being discovered several hours later. And even after a month, a multinational team has neither a single piece of solid evidence nor a theory that covers all observations?
Even if we found the plane right after I click Post, it would have been a string of remarkable coincidences and planning, or an unimaginable freak accident. As it is, this case is going down in history. I used to think that the Earth was fully explored. We have satellite coverage and can even make calls almost anywhere on the surface. Looks like there’s so much more we don’t know.
