Tiny Sea Creatures Could Help Unravel Flight MH370's Mysterious Disappearance. (wionews.com) 28
After the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, barnacles offer "a potential breakthrough" in the search for its wreckage, reports WION:
These barnacles were discovered clinging to the initial piece of debris conclusively linked to MH370 — a flaperon bearing the distinctive marking "657 BB," which washed ashore on Reunion Island, situated off the coast of Africa, a year following the event...
Scientists now posit that barnacles could provide invaluable insights into solving this mystery. These small creatures offer a unique biological record akin to the growth rings found in trees. Researchers speculate that by deciphering this information, it may be feasible to retrace the barnacles' trajectory along the flaperon, potentially leading investigators to the crash site.
This week the Independent also reported a new theory from a British pilot: Simon Hardy believes that the Malaysian Airlines flight plan and technical log reveal last-minute changes to the cargo including an additional 3,000kg of fuel and extra oxygen that indicate Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah directed the plane "to oblivion... It's a strange coincidence that the last engineering task that was done before it headed off to oblivion was topping up crew oxygen which is only for the cockpit, not for the cabin crew...."
Hardy also said that the flaperon found on Reunion Island indicates there was an active pilot until the end of the flight: "If the flaps were down, there is a liquid fuel, then someone is moving a lever and it's someone who knows what they are doing. It all points to the same scenario."
In a kind of rebuttal, long-time Slashdot reader Maury Markowitz suggests there's more innocent explanations for the extra fuel and oxygen, arguing that Hardy's theory "sounds like yet more balonium from someone who likes being in the newspapers."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Press2ToContinue for sharing the news.
Scientists now posit that barnacles could provide invaluable insights into solving this mystery. These small creatures offer a unique biological record akin to the growth rings found in trees. Researchers speculate that by deciphering this information, it may be feasible to retrace the barnacles' trajectory along the flaperon, potentially leading investigators to the crash site.
This week the Independent also reported a new theory from a British pilot: Simon Hardy believes that the Malaysian Airlines flight plan and technical log reveal last-minute changes to the cargo including an additional 3,000kg of fuel and extra oxygen that indicate Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah directed the plane "to oblivion... It's a strange coincidence that the last engineering task that was done before it headed off to oblivion was topping up crew oxygen which is only for the cockpit, not for the cabin crew...."
Hardy also said that the flaperon found on Reunion Island indicates there was an active pilot until the end of the flight: "If the flaps were down, there is a liquid fuel, then someone is moving a lever and it's someone who knows what they are doing. It all points to the same scenario."
In a kind of rebuttal, long-time Slashdot reader Maury Markowitz suggests there's more innocent explanations for the extra fuel and oxygen, arguing that Hardy's theory "sounds like yet more balonium from someone who likes being in the newspapers."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Press2ToContinue for sharing the news.
Lost -- the reboot (Score:2, Offtopic)
Just when you thought that that show was done
They're holding auditions. The homeless in LA can just walk in where there's a big sign that says Come as you are
Doyle (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
It is easy to come up with theories. We know that Malaysian Airlines are grotesquely incompetent, so topping off air for the cockpit can simply mean that this has not been done in a very long time and there wasn't enough.
We could also argue that Boeing is also grotesquely incompetent and that this is a Boeing aircraft. A defective computer is well within their capabilities, as we know. It would be just as possible to create all the known effects from failures relating to Boeing.
There are simply too many theories that fit the limited known facts, and no way to distinguish between them.
It won't help much if we find the aircraft. It'll be too deep to salvage and inspect what's left (which we know is dispersing) and black boxes these days are electronic not mechanical. A mechanical tape wouldn't record much data, but if can last indefinitely without power. Something like an SSD is only going to last a couple of years without power, and we're well beyond that.
But it's also possible the fragments have dispersed enough that there's not enough left to positively identify as an aircraft.
We needed to find the aircraft quickly. Yes, everyone did their best with what was available, but clearly what was available was insufficient.
Aircraft need to transmit more data more often, if we're to avoid a repetition of the hunt fiasco, and both manufacturers and airlines need to be held to higher standards if we're to reduce avoidable disasters.
In short, we need more data and more integrity.
Re: (Score:2)
Something like an SSD is only going to last a couple of years without power, and we're well beyond that.
LOLWUT? SSDs do not need any power to retain data, only RAM does. Find your oldest, dustiest USB flash drive or SD card and give it a try.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Flash has to be periodically refreshed or it loses its data, just nowhere near as often as RAM. The longevity varies by cell type and quality. It might last ten years without a refresh... or it might not.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, still using spinning rust for that due to lower cost and more gradual and forgiving failure modes. But I've been using flash storage since the days when a 16MB USB1 drive was a significant investment, and I haven't seen one lose data from a lack of power yet...
Other media for black boxes? (Score:2)
Wonder if optical drives were ever considered. Or magnetic tape? Those are the typical archival media, to my knowledge. Generally expected to last a number of years, though they're not perfect by any means.
I guess spinning hard drives can be used too. And if size is an issue, there are the laptop sized drives. No idea if the latest versions have the same longevity as previous media, with new techniques changing how they write the bits on the drives.
sigh (Score:2)
You should have to prove that you know something about something before they give you modpoints.
Re:Doyle (Score:5, Insightful)
The most prevalent theory is that the pilot himself, highly experienced with a long career in aviation, tried to turn the plane's disappearance into a mystery by exploiting every known weakness of the system. We can have all the fail-safes of the world, they won't help much if the pilot decides to fly straight into a cliff.
I definitely agree that more data can never hurt, though. The fact that the pilot himself can flip a switch and make the plane "go dark" and vanish from all screens and instruments is rather worrying.
Re: (Score:1)
I always thought that the simplest and most likely explanation was that the plane's lithium battery pack caught fire (an issue the model was later grounded for IIRC?), they tried to turn back but immediately suffered a massive electrical failure that shut down the plane and eventually caused it to crash.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC, when he flew back over the country he exited westward by following the zig-zags of a channel, which he would have known wasn't covered by aviation radars, but wouldn't have known was covered by military radars.
It's pretty sure he wanted to leave a big mystery.
Re: (Score:2)
But why would he want to fly it into the middle of nowhere to commit suicide? People have different types of derangements, but that part ..while possible.. doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Re: (Score:2)
What doesn't make sense to me is why assholes think there's some advantage to taking a lot of other people with them when they off themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
If they cabin door hadn't been re-enforced against hijackers, he could probably have been stopped. In every example of a pilot doing this, the other pilot is out of the cockpit for some reason (e.g. bathroom break) and they lock the door.
The only solution that maintains the hijack proof door is to require there to always be two people in the cockpit, with another member of staff stepping in if one of the pilots needs to come out.
Re: (Score:2)
Another aid from Amateur Radio (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a long video, as he goes into a synopsis, and fairly in depth analysis of what we know. The Amateur Radio part comes in later in the video. And it's related to what I do
Hams use a propagation reporter called WSPR, (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter) It's basically a system where RF signals with location information are sent out - usually at low powers, and with very precise timing, and repetition of the info several times, signals can be received that are essentially below the noise floor, when you can kindasorta know something is there. Receiving stations piece the signals together. So you get worldwide signal transmission on really low RF power.
The receiving stations send the reception reports to the internet, and the station sending the signals gets a report back re any places picking their signal up. Thousands of these every second from all over the world And all that is stored in a huge database.
RF, weird thing that it is, is affected by things moving through the atmosphere. Hams sometimes communicate via meteor scatter, which said meteor leaves an ionized trail that RF bounces off of. Airplanes bounce signals off them, and can affect the propagation of the signals in other ways as well.
So after correlating the affect the WSPR transmissions are experiencing along with the earlier radar signals after the Radar goes away, WSPR can track the airplane. So they analyzed the database, and found where the plane was at long after there was no contact via normal methods.
Re: (Score:1)
And yet, they seem to have done exactly that: create a trace of MH370's position that is consistent with the existing data. They've reportedly also recreated traces of additional aircraft with known flight paths as control experiments.
I've met a handful of Nobel laureates (five, and counting); while some of them are indeed brilliant (like Crick; after a 5 minute presentation on my work, he asked a very insightful, penetrating question), others must have received the prize because they were lucky (right pla
Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
> changes to the cargo including an additional 3,000kg of fuel
Images of the actual logs are available in a 2015 article in The Sun:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26256957/mh370-extra-fuel-oxygen-pilot-plan/
The first of the images shows this "additional 3,000kg of fuel". This is labelled "comp fuel". This is short for "company fuel" which is added to compensate for per-aircraft differences in fuel burn. Some planes burn more fuel, some burn less, and those that burn more add fuel on a separate line for clarity, instead of adjusting the trip fuel. That way you can calculate the fuel needed to reach your destination using the standard numbers for that model of aircraft, and then just add a bit of slush as a separate, clearly labelled line.
This is entirely routine and suggests nothing out of the ordinary. Moreover, if they were planning to ditch in the ocean far short of their destination, why would they ask for *more* fuel?
As a pilot and air investigator, the author of these claims should be very much aware of this.
> It's a strange coincidence that the last engineering task that was done before it headed
> off to oblivion was topping up crew oxygen which is only for the cockpit, not for the cabin crew
Oxygen is lost naturally and has to be topped up time to time. The second image in the Sun article states "crew oxygen system replenished", which appears to be entirely ordinary. They topped it off to the nominal 1800 psi. I see no indication that the crew asked for this, and certainly, nothing to suggest this is "extra". The Sun adds that it was added "only to the cockpit", as if that were interesting, but of course, that's only because this system *only exists in the cockpit*. The cabin systems are either overhead oxygen candles or portable tanks for the cabin crew.
So this sounds like yet more balonium from someone who likes being in the newspapers.
Maybe extra fuel was for another goal? (Score:2)
if they were planning to ditch in the ocean far short of their destination, why would they ask for *more* fuel?
Maybe ditching was a fallback after something else went wrong? Like planning to go somewhere else initially, but they'd already hit a "point of no return" otherwise. To help hide the evidence.
But I'm no expert, and I appreciate the other info you shared. I agree they're probably trying to stir up people with "data" that they can add a spin to. Often we already believe something, and that colors our judgement of everything else.
Re: (Score:2)
flaps (Score:2)
The flaps being deployed typically means the pilot is trying to gain extra lift while slowing the plane, maybe to crash land in the ocean. Sounds more like an effort to save the plane than to kill it.