Missing Malaysian Airlines plane: Can a 'weak signal' unlock decade-old MH370 mystery?
Missing Malaysian Airlines plane: Can a 'weak signal' unlock decade-old MH370 mystery?
Signals captured on underwater microphones could be crucial in locating Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished without a trace about 10 years ago.
The fate of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014 during its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard, has been the subject of extensive theorising and evaluation by investigators over the years.
Now in a fresh development, researchers from Cardiff University have identified a clue that may significantly narrow down the location of the aircraft. As per a report by the Daily Mail, underwater microphones, also known as hydrophones, picked up a weak signal lasting six seconds, which coincides with the suspected crash time of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on March 8, 2014.
Researchers from Cardiff discovered the signal and stated that further tests would be necessary to determine if the sounds recorded by the hydrophones could lead them to the wreckage of the plane believed to be located beneath the Indian Ocean.
Violent ocean impacts, such as as the crash of a Boeing 777-200 aircraft, produce distinctive acoustic signatures which travel vast distances through the water and are recorded by hydrophone technology from various locations on the seabed. The Cardiff researchers began with the assumption that a 200-ton aircraft like the MH370 would release as much kinetic energy as a small earthquake if it crashed at a speed of 200 metres a second.
The Boeing 777 plane disappeared from air control radar 39 minutes after leaving Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
The pilot sent a last radio call to Kuala Lumpur before leaving Malaysia — “Good Night Malaysian Three Seven Zero” — but failed to check in with air traffic controllers in Ho Chi Minh City when the plane crossed into Vietnam’s airspace.
Minutes later, the plane’s transponder — a communication system that transmits the plane’s location to air traffic control — shut down. Military radar saw the plane turn around to travel over the Andaman Sea before it vanished, and satellite data showed it continued to fly for hours, possibly until it ran out of fuel. The plane is believed to have crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.
(With agency inputs)