Update, August 5, 2:23 PM ET: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Wednesday, August 5, that the wing debris did come from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014.
The high-profile disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 remains a mystery—but the recent discovery of a possible wing part points to an ocean landing, raising hopes for a resolution.
“It would be unusual to have only one piece of an airplane floating around on the surface. There must be other pieces out there,” said David Gallo, the director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
The piece, possibly from the wing of the almost 500 days ago, made its way to the shores of RéunionIsland, a French island in the Indian Ocean that lies east of Madagascar. []
The part, called a flaperon, attaches to the backside of a jetliner’s wing and expands and contracts during takeoff and landing. The flaperon recovery spurred an anxious search on RéunionIsland for more debris, but aside from some false leads, including a report of a domestic aircraft ladder, no other parts have yet been identified, .
“The ocean does a great job of dispersing things,” Gallo told Live Science.
And it’s a big place: Although the Indian Ocean is the smallest of the world’s oceans, it still extends 5,965 miles (9,600 km) from Antarctica to the inner Bay of Bengal. It spans 4,847 miles (7,800 km) from east to west, between southern Africa and Western Australia.
Investigators can use computer models to simulate how debris moves in the ocean using ocean current data and possible crash sites. Without knowledge of the initial crash site, the process is trickier and lengthier, but still possible. []
Debris moves according to what the , waves and wind are doing at that location, Centurioni said. “If you have a big chunk of the debris sticking out of the water,” the wind would be the primary force on it rather than another mostly submerged object, which would be at the mercy of ocean currents driven by the temperature and density of the seawater. Massive waves can also rise out of the ocean to pound and reroute debris.
Immense search spaceaccording to The Guardian.
The search for the missing plane covers an area that looks like a “long ribbon of deep water” rather than “a bull’s-eye or haystack,” Gallo said. It’s a “very strange kind of search area.”
Furthermore, the debris could sink if it lacks air pockets and fills with water, or if there is a lot of barnacle, algae or other vegetation growth on it that weighs it down, Centurioni told Live Science.
The ridges and their volcanoes, along with underwater cliffs and valleys, provide ample room for sinking debris to hide, Gallo said. To reach the depths of the ocean and find the plane’s black box (thought to be on the ocean floor), researchers used tethered by a cable and controlled like a video game from the ocean’s surface. They have yet to locate this black box, which contains vital information about the plane’s descent and could indicate how to locate plane debris.
Investigators have used are currently using all three instruments to aid their search.
Professors at the University of Cologne in Germany as goose barnacles, which are limited to certain climate zones. Determining the species of goose barnacle can indicate if the crash occurred in cooler or warmer waters.
Previous plane disappearanceAir France jetliner that crashed in 2009 on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Debris from the flight floating on the surface of the water was spotted within a week of the crash, Gallo said.
“We went pretty much right beneath the last known position and ,” said Gallo, who was involved in the search for the Air France jet. In the case of MH370, “the plane simple vanished.”
No comments:
Post a Comment