The photo above is from an article on a French-language website. It says that the object was found two weeks ago by a French tourist, who gave it to a boat captain, who only gave it to the authorities on Tuesday, May 24. The piece is 80 cm by 40 cm and was discovered on a small island called L’ile aux Bernaches, which lies within the main reef surrounding Mauritius. It is now in the possession of the National Coast Guard, who will pass along photos to the Malaysians and, if they deem it likely to be a part of the missing plane, will send experts to collect it. (According to a second story here.)
The photograph above is the only one that seems to be available so far, and is quite low-res, but it seems to lack any visible barnacles, but has quite a lot of the roughness that barnacles leave behind after they’ve detached, as seen in the Mossel Bay piece. Perhaps worth noting that so far, pieces found on islands (Réunion, Rodrigues) have had substantial goose barnacle populations living on them, while pieces found on the African mainland have been bare. This piece breaks that trend.
Also worth noting, I think, is that all of the objects discovered so far were found by tourists, with the exception of the flaperon, which was found during a beach cleaning of the kind that only happens an tourist destinations. Drift models predict that a lot of the debris should have come ashore on the east coast of Madagascar, but this is not a place that tourists generally frequent. There are also large stretches of the southern African coast that probably see little tourism. All of which is to say that a concerted effort to sweep remote beaches should turn up a lot of MH370 debris.
I haven’t seen any speculation yet as to which part of the plane this latest piece might have come from–any ideas?
UPDATE 5/25/16: In a surprising coincidence, another piece of potential debris has also turned up on Mauritius. According to Ion News, the object was found by a Coast Guard foot patrol along a beach at Gris-Gris, the southernmost point on the island. It was found resting about six meters from the water.
UPDATE 5/26/16: In another surprising turn of events, Australia’s Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Darren Chesterhas issued a media release in which he “confirmed reports that three new pieces of debris—two in Mauritius and one in Mozambique—have been found and are of interest in connection to the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.”
The release goes on:
“The Malaysian Government is yet to take custody of the items, however as with previous items, Malaysian officials are arranging collection and it is expected the items will be brought to Australia for examination,” Mr Chester said. “These items of debris are of interest and will be examined by experts.”
This means of announcing findings related to MH370 marks a departure for the Australian government, which in the past has provided updates from the ATSB (Australia Transport Safety Board) itself. The items are picture below, courtesy of Kathy Mosesian at VeritasMH370:
Meanwhile, a reader has provided an image analysis of the second Mauritius fragment in order to provide a sense of scale:
He observes: “Some rough scaling puts it at around 14 by 26 inches. Those boulders in the other photo look like pebbles; makes it look the size of one cent piece. Note the increasing curvature left to right; ups the bet on a chunk of flap!”
UPDATE 5/27/16: Another piece turned up yesterday, making it four altogether since Wednesday. I think this qualifies as a “debris storm.” At the rate stuff is turning up, there should be a lot more to come. There hasn’t even been an organized search yet!
The BBC reports:
Luca Kuhn von Burgsdorff contacted the BBC on Thursday to say he found the fragment on the Macaneta peninsula.
The authorities have been notified. The piece must be examined by the official investigation team in Australia.
Experts say it is consistent with where previous pieces of debris from the missing plane have been found.
Mr von Burgsdorff took two photographs of the item on 22 May, and sent them to the BBC after reading a story on Thursday about other debris finds in the region.
He said the pieces were “reasonably light, did not have metal on the outside, and looked extremely similar to photos posted on the internet of other pieces of debris from aeroplanes”.
Falken – I have no intention of teeing off at any religion. My main point being that Anwar and his opposition grouping may have been badly mis-characterized by the media and us. But I think most western nations are in the same boat atm – they are religiously diverse and spend a fortune every year keeping an eye on one group in particular. Believe me MH370 has nothing at all to do with US bible belters.
Wazir Roslan – Malaysians are pretty secular I’m well aware but you flew over my main points.
1. It’s inconceivable to me that Shah did not know who Anwar was.
2. MB members do not present as Jihadi’s. No incendiary facebook and no chest beating.
For the record, Al-Qaradawi, like Al Banna does make healthy provision for violent jihad.
@Gysbreght
Yes, I remember reading it in the final accident report. I will attempt to find it again tomorrow.
I remember it surprised me when I read it.
@Gysbreght
The dominant source of BFO error is not measurement error. It is drift in the oscillator chain. I would not expect this error to have a zero mean over the course of any one flight.
IMO, the usefulness of the BFO data is in determining that the aircraft went South. Beyond that the usefulness degrades rather quickly.
My understanding of the analytics done by the IG is that they modeled both BTO and BFO in a “best fit” manner. Certainly BFO was not ignored. That is the allure of the constrained AP flight path. It can be made to fit both the BFO and BTO data quite accurately.
@Oleksandr. You wrote “I would certainly assign the highest priority to the Curtin boom location (~28.5S). It is well defined small area, the most promising in my opinion.” This is not the location West of the Maldives derived by Dr Duncan et al. by triangulation and reported in his paper. Where are you getting this location from?
@Brock. I seemed to remember you mentioned a very slightly different location for the “Curtin Boom” in the last few months (but I could not find your post again); did Dr Duncan revise his estimate?
FWIW I still have the Maldives location on my “table” as a possible crash site (although I suspect Jeff doesn’t). Possible debris found there early on was disregarded without appropriate testing (I believe). It would also be interesting to know whether any debris did in fact turn up on the W. coast of Sumatra; IMO just because it hasn’t been reported wouldn’t necessarily mean none arrived there.
@DennisW:
Unless you can assign a bias, i.e. positive or negative oscillator drift, the mean of the error distribution attributable to that error source is still zero.
Some time ago, when you drew my attention to figure 5.4 of ‘Bayesian Methods’, I asked you about the sign of the oscillator drift, but there was no response.
@Matty
No I didn’t fly over those points, I flew undetected by primary radar 😀
Firstly, let me restate that while most Malays can be secular in outlook their observances of the outer symbols of Islam can be pretty intense albeit stylised. For instance the female scarf wearing thingy is worn as per requirement but adorned as a fashion statement as well in the equation. In fact the scarfs themselves speak of different strands of observances traversing from the liberal to the ultra conservative. Well why do I raise this? Simply because you can see where Shah and family are coming from – the MB orthodox hardliner or the soufflé liberal Muslim crowd.
In short, the outer is a manifestation of the inner namely brimstone and fire like those bible belters in the US but all bluster and nothing more.
2. Yeah, definitely not inconceivable cos they were related! Seriously, assuming that Shah may be in the inner sanctum of things, it is highly inconceivable he would have done something to harm the cause . Why must he do it then when he could have waited for the legal avenues to be exhausted :
http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/malaysia-federal-court-rejects-opposition-leader-anwar-ibrahims-appeal-against-sodomy-conviction/news-story/9875510a9816c4583089a7ce55e6d76b?sv=4012dc5953c762cfcb539ea7ad1c7b0a
Why pick on that particular flight? Why fly so far rather than just crashing it there and then to make a political statement with a bang?
It is more conceivable to picture this as something geopolitical or even if Shah was involved as an act motivated by personal reasons. After all hiding a plane is grossly at odds with standard jihadi modus operandi of loud and gory public statements.
Wazir Roslan – “Seriously, assuming that Shah may be in the inner sanctum of things, it is highly inconceivable he would have done something to harm the cause.”
The cause of the Malaysian opposition has not been harmed. The govt and MAS has been intensely harmed.
“After all hiding a plane is grossly at odds with standard jihadi modus operandi of loud and gory public statements.”
This was not standard Jihadi business. It was a political revenge act, and the MB do have teeth at the end of the day. We have MB figures here in Australia who appear as liberal as any and have roles in the media, and that is not unusual to my knowledge. The MB is not something denoted by a scarf.
“Why pick on that particular flight? Why fly so far rather than just crashing it there and then to make a political statement with a bang?”
It was the first time he got behind the stick after the verdict. Crashing it into something could have been plan A for all we know but this outcome has left the govt squirming for over two years.
@Gysbreght
It is a random walk apart from driving inputs such as temperature variations. The drift can and does go both positive and negative in the short term – weeks to months. The aging component of the drift (small contributor) is unidirectional depending on the cut of the oscillator and how it is mounted. It is a science project to predict how an oscillator will drift. It can be done, but it requires a great deal of instrumentation and measurement as I have done relative to CDMA base station clocks to replace Rubidium oscillators with double oven quartz. Typically we would “age” the final product while temperature cycling for 48 hours to extract aging, and temp. coefficient with a Kalman filter. This “training” period was essential to meet the spec requirement of 24 hour holdover without GPS. No two oscillators were ever the same despite coming off the same manufacturing run.
The single oven temperature compensated oscillators in the AES are very low quality by comparison, and their performance would be quite stochastic.
@Brock McEwen
I’ll try it like this for my lenghtly reply failed two times to get through.
About radar: Butterworth
http://jeffwise.net/2015/07/09/the-mysterious-reboot/
And an inconsistence:
http://alert5.com/2014/03/16/could-tni-au-radar-unit-231-shed-light-on-the-fate-mh370/
Hope it gets through and you will give your opinion on this.
@Jeff Wise
For the thirth time my reply to a post from Brock McEwen doesn’t appear and is lost while replying to others gives no problems.
Can you please explain what might be happening?
@Ge Rijn
There was a reply from you to Brock posted May 29, 2016 at 5:27 AM (page 6) that didn’t appear straight away. Probably because you included 2 http links. I believe these have to be manually OKed by Jeff and then appear in the original time order, whereas a post with one link nearly always appears straight away. I daresay Jeff will correct this info if I am wrong.
@Jeff. There were two longish periods I noticed when the blog couldn’t be accessed (approx Fri night and Sat night NY time) – perhaps database maintenance or something else such as DoS?
@Erik Neslon @Oleksandr @Victorl Your recent posts help greatly to reconcile the likelihood of a terminus in the SIO with the assumption that the SIO was not the intended destination at the point of diversion (if you don’t mind me referencing you in this regard). This point is rather important when considering whether the Malaysian authorities acted on the opportunity for interaction with the aircraft during the course of its overflight of Malaysia. Moreover, any such interaction could have precipitated events that ultimately produced the FMT and the terminus in the SIO.
@Ge Rijn The period of three minutes between the supposed last Butterworth radar contact at 18:22 and the reboot of the SDU at 18:25 is perhaps indicative of intentional timing. Could you rather consider, however, that while this rather uncanny level of accuracy would be difficult to manage by the pilot, it would be rather easy and even ‘convenient’ to manage the time of the last radar data by the people reporting it? The Malaysian authorities would certainly have both opportunity and motive to 1. truncate the ATC transcripts at the point of diversion (i.e, redact additional VHF communications while in Malaysian airspace); 2. truncate the Butterworth radar data (if necessary); and 3. by way of the above ensure a ‘mysterious loss’ of the aircraft not only from 18:22, but from the point of diversion at IGARI.
From here, you can rank the probability of the above scenario against others. Given other elements (e.g., 7 hours of maintained flight, no attempted landing), I would say that such deliberate actions on the part of the Malaysians are even more probable than a technical failure from the point of diversion to the supposed terminus in the SIO.
The period between 18:25 and the FMT: perhaps the aircraft’s ultimate fate was indeed determined here by as yet unknown events aboard the aircraft. Finally, I would suggest that perhaps there are precursors to these events (known to persons in Malaysia) to be found in the time elapsed in the course of the overflight of the Malaysian Peninsula. As for awareness of what exactly transpired between 18:25 and the FMT by those same persons, perhaps they are not in the know, which would then provide a foundation for their plausible deniability – as we are so witnessing.
@AM2 @Jeff Wise
Thanks a lot for explaining, that’s solved:-)
Hope Jeff notices the second and thirth comment are overdone and don’t need to be published.
And hope Brock McEwen read the comment in the meantime.
@Rand
you said:
“@Erik Neslon @Oleksandr @Victorl Your recent posts help greatly to reconcile the likelihood of a terminus in the SIO with the assumption that the SIO was not the intended destination at the point of diversion (if you don’t mind me referencing you in this regard).”
That is funny shit. It did take me awhile to parse it.
@Rand
Did you read my reply on Brock McEwen from May 29/5:27?
I guess it partly deals with your question also.
To assume a set up by Malaysians to falsify Butterworth radar data (and those other data) and make those data be consistent with data that only became available later is impossible imo.
They had to be able to forsee the future.
In this regard I do see a big inconsistency with the report MH370 wasn’t tracked or seen by the Atjeh radar station.
Maybe this was already explained long time ago still unknow to me. Maybe you can answer me on this?
I’ll repeat the link:
http://alert5.com/2014/03/16/could-tni-au-radar-unit-231-shed-light-on-the-fate-mh370/
@Rand
To add and your thoughts asked.
From my understanding of the data I know of:
The SDU reboot was finished at 18:25.
The first ground to plane sat-call took place at 18:40.
The automated handshake was at 18:41.
The sat-phone BTO/BFO 18:40 suggest the plane was allready/still in its turn to the south and at 18:41 the BFO/BTO suggest a changed heading ~187S.
After this the plane appears again at 19:41 on a ~same heading.
To my knowing this information wasn’t available at the time of those primary radar trackings and Malaysian media statements about them.
If I’m wrong somewhere I gladly hear.
The whole sequence of data/events imo point to calculated human intervention including the FMT. Who’s human intervention remains still unknow. But to assume the whole sequence of data and events could be fabricated by the Malaysians on forehand (or afterwards), can not be the human intervention to explain what the data and events are telling.
@Rand – I agree not enough out there to profile Cpt Zaharie as an Islamist. Politically active? Very likely. A ‘sleeper’ radicalised to the point of murdering hundreds of innocent passengers? No evidence for that.
I thought you made some good points too some days ago on the implausibility of the existence of a multi national conspiracy. And going back even further I think you did an excellent job trying to fact check by phone some of the Maldives witness reports. I wish some journalists were similarly minded.
@Matty – has Spencer stolen your log-on details? I’m not buying the story yet but will be very interested to see what else you can dig up.
@all – I remain somewhat bemused by attempts to use drift models to favour one starting location for debris over another based on the timing and locations of discoveries in the East African coastal region.
Adrift.org seems to be a favourite model as it is easy to use and to extract data from. It is purely statistical and is based on an analysis of a 34 year history of the movements of global drifter buoys which is a strength, but it is worth noting that roughly 50% of the buoys were attached to drogues to better represent ocean currents well below the surface layer.
The model has spatial resolution of 1 degree by 1 degree and bases calculations of the probability of moving from one 2D square-degree cell to another on a 2 month time step. This is eminently suitable for the task for which the model was originally designed (tracking large scale movements of plastic particles globally from one ocean basin to another over timescales of thousands of years) but seems less than ideal for the nuanced small scale debris tracking analyses that are being attempted by some.
We presently have one confirmed (flaperon) and several highly likely candidates for discovered MH370 debris. Let’s ignore for the moment the uncertainty in the first arrival times of these items in the vicinity of the locations where they were discovered. The chance that the model can meaningfully represent the actual trajectory of any one of these items is tiny, and we know from the drifter database itself that even from the same starting point on the 7th arc there is a very wide range in transit times to east Africa. Any particular find could have come from near the front of the model particle distribution, or the rear.
The debris finds are observed data. One would think that a normal approach would be to calibrate drift models to this observed data. The uncertainties are such that we could just as well do this for any starting point on the 7th arc, and have a range of equally valid models.
@Rand
And if your suggestions of fabrication of data and events could be true it would unavoidably mean Inmarsat must be involved.
Also this I regard near to impossible.
M Pat – Anwar Ibrahim heads a three party alliance. One of those parties is the PAS which is transparently Islamist and openly draws it’s inspiration from the Muslim Brotherhood. PAS administers regions in the north where flogging and Sharia are practiced and it is the bolter in the pack getting a lot of traction in the Malaysian electorate. This alliance has Anwar as it’s official head and spokesman while Anwar had Shah as a relative and supporter.
It’s not even vaguely ambiguous where Shah’s allegiances lay. He was part of a growing trend in Malaysian society towards conservative Islam – something not mirrored as much in neighbouring Indonesia.
“Democracy is Dead”
Be afraid.
M Pat – Anwar supporters are under no illusions as to how that alliance is intended to work. Anwar is the trojan horse.
” At a 2005 ABIM conference in Malaysia, Dr. Ahmad Totonji — IIIT’s Vice President and a co-founder of a Saudi-financed Islamic charity with ties to the SAAR Foundation and al Qaeda — praised Ibrahim’s efforts to promote Islamic rule in his homeland: “We have changed the world. I first came to Malaysia in 1970 and was met by Br[other] Anwar…. I am glad to see sisters everywhere in Malaysia today wearing [the] hijab. We have made a better world for Muslims.” Totonji further congratulated Ibrahim for his success in disguising his underlying desire to replace Malaysia’s parliamentary democracy with a system based on Sharia Law: “It was wise not to involve ABIM in the political work, it was wise to keep daawah [proselytization] separate from politics.”
You need to look long and hard at any supporter of Anwar.
@M Pat
Like to comment something if you don’t mind.
‘The debris finds are obsereved data, ..a normal approach would be to calibrate drift models to this observed data’ .
In this case and at this point in time with the finding of 5 confirmed debris and another 4 highly likely candidates I think it could be very usefull to also incorparate an approach including ‘not observed data/debris’.
As far as I now this hasnt been done yet including all the now found (confirmed) debris by anyone.
Imo that would leave big parts of the 7th arc out of possible starting points.
I hope someone will attempt this kind of drift modelling soon.
@Brock
Remember, you started off claiming ‘fatal flaws’ and ‘violations of physics’ in the current search area definition.
>…MH370 had to pass over the tip of Sumatra
I believe you are considering straight line courses only in which case accessing the southern end of the search zone requires an early major final turn. The DSTG model allows turns & speed changes (fig 10.4 of the DSTG report) so paths to the south end of the zone (low probability outcomes in the model) do not require an early turn and overfly of Sumatra. MISUNDERSTANDING THE ATSB MODEL.
>…Fugro ships were turned around just shy of this point, ostensibly because
>of a material miscalculation in … range limit.
The DSTG model is not driven by fuel ranges, infinite fuel is assumed and the tracks checked post-facto for feasibility (sec 8.3 point 4 DSTG report). It would seem that the model was updated (they do change) and the extracted search area moved south – probably nothing to do with fuel range. The driver is whether the manoeuvre model allows the track, not whether it is compatible with the fuel range. MISUNDERSTANDING THE ATSB MODEL.
>…towfish equipment missed wreckage
Sorry, don’t understand. Who is arguing that the sea-floor wreckage was definitely missed? Clearly, there must be some chance of that happening, no system is perfect and the size of the final sea-floor wreckage fragments is not certain, no-one has driven a 777 into the ocean at Mach 1 before (one of the possibilities). The fact that the search has retraced only a small fraction indicates the original work is generally trusted by the search. NO BASIS FOR STATEMENT
–…Curtin’s acoustic equipment
This is speculation, there is no record of this equipment detecting crashing aircraft. From the graphs I have seen, the noise in the data in enormous. UNPROVEN SCIENCE
>contrail analysis
I assume you read the critique from Simon Proud? The science is very dubious. POOR SCIENCE
>air and satellite surface debris search which focused on precisely this area
>March 17-27
This has been extensively discussed. There was some air search coverage of the area in poor weather conditions (10 days at least after the crash) but to imply there was 11 days of work on the ATSB search area is misleading. INTERESTING BUT NOT FATAL
High resolution satellite data would have been needed over a very wide area to have any chance of picking up small debris, never mind cloud cover. If that was attempted seriously then chances of success were small. POOR SCIENCE
>…now thoroughly discredited assumption that the search has been conducted in good faith
If the proof for this statement is the material above, then the case is not made. Adding up multiple dubious points and then arguing that together they have value doesn’t work, n times rubbish = rubbish.
To repeat, the ATSB model may not represent the reality of March 2014 and hence not be useful. Unless you believe that the search should not have been started in the first place (an arguable position) please define the bare-bones of a model with at least some basis in data that could lead to an area of searchable size, particularly if it includes the glide case.
M Pat –
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/66f264ac4ae862eb83db189b55b4aa51
Hamid also has a very conservative Muslim background – pictured here on the far left with his family. I believe one or more of these guys took the plane and the Malaysian govt knew in a flash what had happened. The rest has been theatre with a lot of western acquiescence.
@Matty Perth
Just it say thank you for clarifying the picture, and shedding some much needed light to the subject/relevance of Shah’s connection with Anwar.
We have a better picture if it now. I just assumed that “democracy is dead” was a comment on the current situation in Malaysia, not a portent of what might be to come.
Little wonder then, that the Malaysian government, and other governments reacted in the way they did.
@Matty Perth
You said “I believe one or more of these guys took the plane, and the Malaysian government knew in a flash what had happened” Exactly what I’ve been saying all along (apart from the “or more” bit. I still think Shah acted alone)
I’ve had the feeling I’ve been pedalling into the wind for quite some time (as Dennis would say!) Not so funny shit, eh Dennis?
@Rand
I made a fast-reading mistake in that sequence.
Offcourse the first automated handshake was at 19:41 and the second the plane appeared at 20:41.
My source was and still is:
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/1392
But my point was to question this overal sequence of data and events could be fabricated by the Malaysians (and/or others).
Before I give this window some respite from my hammering it’s worth remembering that the charges against Anwar look totally cooked up and his supporters were not going to take it lying down forever. And among his supporters he can count some of the nastiest people on the planet. They were always going to react at some point to the serial incarceration of their leader on what are fraudulent charges. When the framing of Anwar started many years ago his backers were fewer and the world a very different place.
And that investigation…..please.
@Matty Perth
Take a break tomorrow, perhaps leisurely stroll through King’s Park, or a trip to Kaili’s fish restaurant in Fremantle.
The ‘Curtin boom event’ hypothesis was left as a dead end by it’s own creator a long time ago:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/09/indian-ocean-signal-was-not-crash-of-flight-mh370.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+news%2Frss%2Fnewsblog+%28News+Blog+-+Blog+Posts%29
@Ge Rijn
You mentioned the TNI Radar Unit 233, but forgot to mention the most important Indonesian Air Force Primary Radar; Unit 231 located at 1550 feet AMSL on Pulau Weh off the northern tip of Sumatra. If avoidance of radar was planned, that radar was the one that needed to be considered and appropriate action taken.
Bear in mind that the IAF (TNI) has never mentioned it – because they were never asked.
AM2,
Re: “This is not the location West of the Maldives derived by Dr Duncan et al. by triangulation and reported in his paper. Where are you getting this location from?”
Dr Duncan has published 2 papers. In the first paper a curve of possible locations was derived based on HA01 and RCS, consistent with bearing at HA01 (which actually has array of sensors). It was also mentioned in ATSB report. Intersection of this curve with the 7th arc is at ~28.5S (see plot, for example, in my December’s paper), subject to the difference between the nominal 7th arc from the actual, assumed altitude, assumed sound speed in the seawater, which depends on the temperature and salinity. But the good thing is that uncertainty is small, so the ‘suspect’ area is relatively small.
In the second paper Dr Duncan assumed that one of the acoustic pressure peaks recorded at the Scott Reef station was caused by the same event. And this is clearly stated in his paper. But the issue is that there no reasons to make such an assumption, as the signal amplitude was 7 times higher at the Scott Reef. The signals are obviously similar at RCS and HA01, but different at the Scott Reef. Furthermore, the Scott Reef station was not recording at the expected time of arrival should the source be at 28S, so it is not possible to exclude other peaks later. It is also interesting to note that in the first paper Dr Duncan wrote that no signal was detected at HA08, which is ~6 times closer to the estimated ‘Maldive’ source than the Scott Reef. I have asked for the clarification from Dr Duncan, but he has not responded to me.
Ge Rijn,
“Posted May 30, 2016 at 5:41 AM
The ‘Curtin boom event’ hypothesis was left as a dead end by it’s own creator a long time ago”.
That appears to be true. The question is why? I suspect pressure from ATSB is to blame on for a number of reasons I don’t want to post here.
@Oleksandr
I guess it could be rejected for it doesn’t fit in the currant data?
The time 1:30 doesn’t fit the Inmarsat data and a possible location doesn’t fit the Inmarsat data c.q. the 7th arc.
However the event time could better fit the Maldives sightings and it’s possible vicinity to Diego Garcia with a ‘shot down’ scenario.
So in this stage of the search it could be wise to not reject it all together but to keep it in mind imo.
@Oleksandr.
So basically, you have decided to extend the curve of possible locations (as published by Dr Duncan et al.) until it intersects with the 7th arc and you are now calling that intersection the “Curtin Boom” location (instead of 2.11°N, 69.31°E from the Scott Reef paper 4 Sep 2014). I suggest it is unreasonable to call your own favoured location by that same name and it may well confuse some folks. If you still believe that the plane crashed near the 7th arc that’s up to you but I don’t think Dr Duncan ever made the claim that their findings were consistent with a crash on or near the 7th arc.
re: HA08. “HA08, has two arrays, each with three hydrophones, in the British Indian Ocean Territory / Chagos Archipelago in the northern Indian Ocean. Only the southern HA08 array was operational at the time MH370 was lost.” from Curtin Uni Media release 4 June 2014 “Curtin researchers in search for acoustic evidence of MH370”. I’m not sure if this means that the southern array can only detect signals from the south.
Ge Rijn,
You did not get it. It fits all the data.
The timing 1:30 perfectly corresponds to the seabed impact. I have discussed this issue with several specialists in marine acoustics, and all of them, including Dr Duncan, converged to the idea that detection of the seabed impact would be very likely. It remains a mystery why ATSB thinks that timing is inconsistent.
The location I am talking about is the geometrical intersection of the 7th arc and the “source curve”, thus it fits the 7th arc by definition (do not confuse with the triangulation solution near Maldives – it is based on the assumption that spike at the Scott Reef was of the same origin).
And note, this area coincides with ATSB’s original “data driven” priority area. On top of it, it is consistent with the predictions of at least 3 drift models.
Does it deserve further attention?
AM2,
No, I did not “extend it”. I just overlapped it with the the 7th ping ring (initially 6th ping ring) and found accurate geometrical solution. The curve was published by Dr Duncan in June 2014 and in ATSB report. I only replicated their work in this regard, as 2 years ago I was curious what is the location of the intersection.
May I kindly decline your suggestion? The term “Curtin boom” location as the intersection of the 6th ping with “source curve” (7th ping ring was not yet defined, but only extrapolated) appeared in June-July 2014. It was before the second paper of Dr Duncan. Thus I will continue calling it “Curtin boom location”.
You should read both the papers, and only after that draw conclusions.
Nine pieces already recovered n the region of Madagascar where I said I believed the plane to be three days after it went missing ,When will anyone in authority concede that that is where an underwater search should take place ,? Support for this and the completion needed for the relatives asked for ,
@Oleksandr
‘Does it deserve further attention’?
I don’t know. Cann’t speak for others.
I left it when it became obvious it could not fit the data then and was discarded.
I regard it as in the same catagory as the towelette found on a W.A. shore.
If no further supporting or confirming evidence shows up it’s for the moment a waste of time and useless for the currant investigation.
But as I said; that could change in the future.
So in that regard it maybe can become a more important event. But I seriously doubt it.
In a way it could be consistant with 3 drift models but most (if not all) are only based on the flaperon till now. Which is an item that showed basic contradictions in the ways it could have floated (France Meteo drift study) and with those contradictions the possible times and speeds it took the get at Reunion. Those contradictions are still not solved.
So final conclusions based on the flaperon used in drift models cna not be made imo.
I think this will dramaticaly change if now all found debris-spots (and the areas where nothing is found yet, almost equaly important imo) get included in a new drift study.
@Oleksandr
Another thing you mention twice that seems hardly likely to me is that the impact on the seabed of debris after a high speed impact (or a low speed) will be detectable thousends km further away.
The debris will touch the seabed with a relatively very slow speed and then even likely be softened by silt on the botom.
I can imagine a high speed impact on the surface will generate a rather large ‘sonic boom’ through the water but not the touching of debris on the ocean floor.
By the way; I would be interested in how many of those ‘acoustic events’ get registrated in a certain time span. Is this generaly 10 each month? Or 5? Or 20?
@Ge Rijn. I was rather indicating that the Malaysians were NOT in the know as to what transpired aboard the aircraft from c. 18:25 (or perhaps before) through to the FMT, while perhaps they were in contact with the aircraft as it flew back over the Malaysian Peninsula. In suggesting that perhaps they clipped the radar data at 18:22, I am simply noting that this is more likely than the pilot nailing it on the timing. Likewise with regards to the rather tidy ending to the ATC transcripts. Malaysia is perhaps not directly responsible for the loss of the aircraft; they are perhaps responsible for covering up what preceded the loss of the aircraft post diversion at IGARI. There is no requirement of falsifying the ISAT data. In brief, more is known by the Malaysians than they are revealing. Rewatch Najib and Hisammuddin in their televised interviews of 2014 re “it was considered a commercial aircraft and deemed not a threat.” They are scripted (they make nearly the exact same statement in reply to the same query), and they bluster with contempt for the interviewer; they are lying through their crooked teeth. Their facial expressions are all twisted, you can sense their deception. Watch both clips several times and you will notice the “corporeal stress”, which I associate with lying. Apologies, can’t recall the name of the production entities; Four Corners perhaps for Hishammuddin and Richard Quest for Najib? Fudge, my middle age is showing.
Tell you what: I’ll throw out the truncation of the radar data; let’s say it was a fortuitous coincidence that the flight lost equilibrium shortly thereafter, as the Malaysians didn’t want to know what ultimately transpired, anyway.
Trust me, these are people who murder others in their dreams; they are rotten to the core. Disappearing a hijacking is nothing to them.
@VictorI
I searched for “Banda Aceh” + “BEDAX” and found an article describing arrivals / departures to / from WITT. Conspicuously, both BEDAX & ANOKO are SID waypoints for that airport. If MH370 continued straight past MEKAR, without veering slightly NE towards NILAM, then it would have flown directly towards ANOKO. Is that trajectory consistent with the radar track, is it definitively certain that the a/c veered NE towards NILAM to track air-route N571 ?
Perhaps the a/c maintained 285 heading, past MEKAR off of N571, direct to ANOKO, with FMT towards BEDAX, as the initial stages of a holding pattern whilst attempting communication with ground and awaiting landing authorization ? I understand BEDAX is ~150nm @ ~200 ETN from ANOKO.
https://saripedia.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/banda-aceh.pdf
@Rand
Yes it sure looks they are trying hard to cover up some essential information.
But most of all I think they then all try to cover their own butt first and cover eachother for this the most.
It’s how things generaly work in a factual dictatorship country.
The rest of ‘down-hierarchical’ people involved are too scared to say anything in such a country. They land in jail or worse.
But their inflated, unscrupulous egos tend to always make flaws and mistakes that show early (by their facial/communicating expression as you mention)or later (too late often..) by mistakes they made in their all ego-consumming believe in their own greatness and wisdom.
In that sence they are in fact very stupid people that only rely on power, shrewdness and lack of conscience.
In the end they always make crucial mistakes and they fall, get caught or disappear.
It’s only very sad that most damage is done by then and often they get away with it too and leave others to clean up the mess they made.
The truncation of the radar could afterall well be such a stupid top-down decision that will come out sooner or later (much later I’m afraid).
I hope soon offcourse.
Question:
Is it possible that the focus on the ping data, BFO / BTO / Inmarsatt data is just a lot of “noise”? Whether well intention honest mistake or malicious ruse, is it “real” or valid?
Yes, SIO is huge, but they are searching and finding nothing. What to me is worrisome is the human factors in this: it doesn’t make sense. Who sits around for 7 hours waiting to die?
Could MH370 have crashed (whether accident or deliberate) no more than an hours flying time or 1000km from IGREX ? . Possible in the Indian Ocean outside or west of Thailand? Generally not even as far south as they are searching? (Making the 7hr 30 min later last ping merely “noise”?)
(Thank you in advance for any response to what may seem like an insane question. )
Ge Rijn,
Re: “In a way it could be consistant with 3 drift models but most (if not all) are only based on the flaperon till now.”
None of the models I referred to is based on the flaperon.
Re “Which is an item that showed basic contradictions in the ways it could have floated (France Meteo drift study) and with those contradictions the possible times and speeds it took the get at Reunion. Those contradictions are still not solved.”
What contradictions? There are no contradictions. All reverse drift studies, (e.g. GEOMAR, France Meteo) are rubbish in this case. My suggestion – throw them away and never waste your time again.
Re: “hardly likely to me is that the impact on the seabed of debris after a high speed impact (or a low speed) will be detectable thousends km further away.”
It would be. It is somewhat questionable whether surface impact can be detectable, but certainly no question about the seabed impact. And actually the distance is a bit more than 1,000 km, not thousands km as you wrote.
Re: “I can imagine a high speed impact on the surface will generate a rather large ‘sonic boom’ through the water”
This is questionable. May be yes, may be no, depends on. In contrast to the seabed impact.
Re: “even likely be softened by silt on the botom.”
Based on Fugro’s images there are patches with not as sick layer of silt, as it was initially believed. Perhaps no silt at all in some areas.
Re: “I would be interested in how many of those ‘acoustic events’ get registrated in a certain time span. Is this generaly 10 each month? Or 5? Or 20?”
Well… I would say one per several minutes, meaning several tens of thousands per month.
@mg if this is the case that this is the location, which of the existing evidence supports this argument? Genuinely interested. Also what would be your theory regarding the other evidence? And where has the debris been all this time?
@Oleksandr
I don’t get all your points well I guess and to be honest I don’t want to argue them further now.
But your last one about frequency of those events: ‘..one per several minutes, meaning several tens of thousands per month’ is telling to me but a bit confusing.
If you mean what you say here and I understand it well, it means that the chance statisticaly one of those events could happen at 1:30 on 8 march is so large that it renders it to not a special event at all but one of tens of thousands that happen random in the Indian Ocean every month.
To argue your other statements in this comment I think I better leave them to someone else for I regard the ‘Curtin boom’ as a dead end and mostly a waste of time for the time being, with all respect to your opinion.
@Cay.
I keep an open mind. I think there is a (small) chance, that the Inmarsat data are fake and that the radar detection/ turn back over malaysia is as well. It’s very strange the Indonesian radar did not see the plane f.i.
Oleksandr – I agree with you about Dr Duncan. He was under no illusions about where he sat in the data pecking order and he seemed careful to subordinate his work below the ISAT data. In other words he pulled his head in. He would have received a pretty strong signal from the ATSB in order for this to happen.
Rand – boy you are so right when you say “Trust me, these are people who murder others in their dreams; they are rotten to the core.”
What doesn’t come across very well is their visceral hatred, and it’s not limited to their govt. Malaysia has baggage that comes from it’s colonial period and also a need to assert it’s main religion. There is a commenter here who in Malaysian forums unloads with schoolyard racist invective towards anyone with Chinese/Indian background. It’s something to see. Mahatir was a decent personification of the twisted nationalism under the surface in that country. They are in denial about their plane, their politics, their religious politics, and what is happening in their country.
tomnod results:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOLnD8Z5x2M
Ge Rijn,
I see you are ‘infected’ by Brock’s misinterpretation. Yes, you understood the last point correctly. However, you need to take into account that:
– Only spikes after 00:19 to roughly 02:00 are of interest;
– Spikes in the acoustic pressure have different characteristics defined by their origin: cracking icebergs, earthquakes, whales, ships, etc.
This dramatically reduces a number of spikes that could be relevant to MH370. The two events at HA01 and RCS may be relevant, including timing and amplitudes. It is possible to assume that these spikes are likely result of a single event (the 1st paper). There is no 100%-confidence, strictly speaking.
It is required to have one more condition for triangulation. Dr Duncan made an assumption that a spike observed at the Scott Reef station was caused by the same event (his 2nd paper). I made an assumption that the origin is at the 7th arc. His triangulation resulted in the location near Maldives. My triangulation – near 28.5S. I didn’t find any similarity in the signal at the Scott Reef, in contrast to the similarity of HA01 and RCS signals.
Surprisingly, Brock continue promoting his misinterpretation of Dr Duncan’s results. He does not question his assumption, but instead he questions validity of the 7th arc. I find it ridiculous.
I want to make it clear that should the source be at the 7th arc, it would be near 28.5S, the timing would be consistent with the seabed impact, the Scott Reef station would not peak the signal because it was not recording at the expected arrival time. There are no inconsistencies mentioned by Brock with regard to the “Curtin boom” in this case.