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Transportation

Could Sea Explosions Finally Locate the 2014 Crash Site of Flight MH370? (cardiff.ac.uk) 31

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished in 2014 — and efforts continue to find it. In 2018 a UK-based video producer claimed to have discovered the crashed aircraft on Google Maps — but Newsweek pointed out the same wreckage "is visible in imagery dating back to January 1, 2004 — more than a decade before MH370 disappeared."

Marine robotics company Ocean Infinity also failed to find the aircraft after a five-month search in 2018 — but has returned to the headlines this March, writes the Independent, "claiming that they have scientific evidence" for the flight's final resting place. (The company's CEO says the last six years they've been "innovating with technology and robotics to further advance our ocean search capabilities.")

And this week Indian Express reported that researchers from the UK's Cardiff University investigating the mystery "have come up with a novel plan to unravel it — sea explosions."

More from the Economic Times: Scientists have said that airplanes crashing over oceans create unique acoustic signatures that can travel more than 3,000km through water. These acoustic signatures can be recorded by a network of 11 hydroacoustic stations worldwide that are dotted along the seabed. Researchers at Cardiff University have said that a series of controlled underwater explosions or air gunfire along the 7th arc [where the plane last communicated] can be done to see whether they can isolate a more precise location for MH370.
More details from NDTV: "[W]ithin the time frame and location suggested by the official search, only a single, relatively weak signal was identified,'' Dr Kadri said... ''Similar exercises were performed in the search and rescue mission for the ARA San Juan, a submarine that vanished off the coast of Argentina in 2017. This shows us that it is relatively straightforward and feasible and could provide a means to determine the signal's relevance to MH370, prior to resuming with another extensive search. If found to be related, this would significantly narrow down, almost pinpoint, the aircraft's location,'' Dr Kadri added...

Despite the largest search in aviation history, the plane has never been found.

An announcement from Cardiff University adds that "The experiments would also help develop the use of hydroacoustic technology as a tool for authorities to draw upon when narrowing down potential crash locations for airplanes in the future."
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Could Sea Explosions Finally Locate the 2014 Crash Site of Flight MH370?

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  • Not sure why you would think otherwise.
    • Re: Nope (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LindleyF ( 9395567 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @04:01PM (#64500989)
      It might work. The summary doesn't explain it very well, but the idea is that if you simulate events that "sound like" a plane crash in various places, you can map the coordinate space. That might allow sourcing the actual crash signal to a location. Assuming that's what they have. I worked on a similar concept involving lighting strikes a decade ago.
      • Re: Nope (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @04:15PM (#64501009)

        It's audio triangulation while having to adjust for coastlines and seafloors.

        Other than the ocean being bloody huge and the acoustic sensors not being omnipresent, I can't see a reason why it wouldn't work.

        My question would be if it would be any more accurate than a last transponder position from a plane - after all, things tend not to sink straight down and you can get quite a large potential landing area.

        My next question is if such impacts could be detected by existing Earth-facing satellites and if so, why don't we just start monitoring for them.

        • Re: Nope (Score:5, Interesting)

          by pz ( 113803 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @04:36PM (#64501031) Journal

          The key here is that they are proposing to calibrate the acoustic localizing network for a very specific area of the world, in the zone where a specific plane, MH370, is thought to have been lost. And if I'm remembering the details correctly, MH370 not only went down well outside the zone where there are receivers to pick up transponders, but the plane's transponder was also disabled by whomever was flying, hours before the aircraft went down. Thus the rather large potential search zone (interestingly, some recent additional analysis suggests that the resting location may be just off one edge of the area that was searched.)

          It isn't clear how we might obtain the acoustic signature of a water impact from space. Maybe you have some ideas?

          • Not acoustics - I am well aware that sound can't propagate through vacuum

            I was thinking more like unusual illumination... which assumes a significant surface fire. I'm not sure how likely such a fire is when a jet impacts water at speed.

            • A fire is particularly unlikely in this case as it is thought to have impacted after exhaustion its fuel. Also, the pieces of wings which floated after the crash, and were recovered on the shores of Africa, did not show signs of fire damage.

            • Locating visually from space would first require coverage and secondly good visibility conditions. If they could see the aircraft from space and it was recorded they would not need to wait for it to crash they could monitor it's flight path.
              • If they could see the aircraft from space and it was recorded they would not need to wait for it to crash they could monitor it's flight path.

                Well, certainly spy satellites can see planes from space - that's very much their job.

                Certainly, spy satellites can - and do - monitor activity at and around airports, railway junctions, weapons factories, military bases ... etc, etc.

                Now, the problem is ... how many military planes, submarine bases, army training grounds, etc are in the ocean 1500km SW of Perth WA?

        • by gtall ( 79522 )

          I can see where it might not matter whether they isolate the exact spot. Oceans have currents, things do not fall straight to the bottom.

    • Re:Nope (Score:5, Interesting)

      by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @04:29PM (#64501019)

      Because it already worked in the past. French submarine Minerve disappeared in 1968 in the Mediterranean sea, and its location remained a mystery until recently. In 2018, upon appeal of the family of the victims to the highest authorities, a new search is ordered.

      The seismic traces from January 27, 1968, contained signals of the possible implosion, so scientists simulated the reverse propagation of sound waves until it converged to a specific spot. A subsequent search was commission to the oceanographic ship ''Seabed Constructor'', which had previously participated in the search of the MH370. The wreckage was found within days. It lies by 2230 meters (7316 ft) below sea level, 45 km (25 nmi) south of its home port.

      After observing the images, investigators concluded it must have suffered a collision with a merchant ship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • I mean, welcome our mechanical dolphin/bat/whatever grid.

  • What we know: Plane crashed into deep ocean. Everyone on board is dead. Wreck very deep, remains long gone thanks to bone worms.
    What we do not know: Exact coordinates of the location that families cannot visit and where there are no remains to recover.
    Not sure the companies hawking search tech are doing this "for the families".

    • What we know: Plane crashed into deep ocean. Everyone on board is dead. Wreck very deep, remains long gone thanks to bone worms.
      What we do not know: Exact coordinates of the location that families cannot visit and where there are no remains to recover.
      Not sure the companies hawking search tech are doing this "for the families".

      Then do it for the people on some future plane crash.

      If we can deduce the site of a plane crash using data from hydrophones, or whatever other technology is proposed to find MH370, then that technique could prove useful in gathering up survivors of some future airplane crash. We can't expect people to put many lives at risk, and destroy valued property, in an experiment to test some new search and rescue techniques. What we can do though is look through old sensor data for patterns that indicate the locat

      • Instead of trying to use expensive and tricky methods to find future plane crashes how about just fucking tracking them properly. There is ZERO reason in this day and age to not be able to provide second by second pinpoint geolocation of any plane and it is infinitely cheaper than trying to find it after the fact.
        • Tracking large civilian aircraft second by second is likely trivial now but not everything that flies out at sea is a large civilian aircraft with the means to have such kinds of tracking. We can use this to track military aircraft. Civilian aircraft could be tracked where the real-time tracking equipment on board had failed, had been damaged somehow, or perhaps was tampered with. We could track satellites or meteors that fell into the sea. Maybe this proves useful for tracking wildlife, icebergs, or so

        • The problem isn't a technical one. It's an economic one. Data transmission companies such as InMarSat charge for such services, for exactly the same reasons as your phone company charge for your landline service.

          Malaysia Airlines chose to not pay for that increased data traffic, before the event. They obviously didn't see sufficient economic justification for the cost. That is the problem - not a technical one.

          The odds of a Malaysian state airline paying attention to girning on an international website ar

  • by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @06:02PM (#64501193)
    I am sick of seeing headlines every few months of yet another expert or company saying they know the exact location if only Maylasia or Australia would fund them to go find it. Maylasia should simply offer a bounty, you find it you get paid otherwise FUCK OFF.
  • Scientists have said that airplanes crashing over oceans create unique acoustic signatures that can travel more than 3,000km through water.

    Dispersion distorts the signal a lot over (sea water-filled) space. It is amazing they manage to match the signature 3000 km away.

    • I think the proposal is more akin to seismic earthquake monitoring, in that you get a series of sound events from the existing geophone (hydrophone) network (nuclear test-ban treaty ; coincidental recordings form harbour-entry sonic or other sound recordings), then back-calculating form that set of time-series to see if any sounds come coherently from a small origin area. It's akin to taking a geophone record and seeing if it contains the sounds (seismic) of this particular earthquake, and if *that* geophon
  • Someone has already done this work with exactly this technology for MH370 right after it crashed and corresponded the location with other triangulation techniques

    https://www.reddit.com/r/MH370... [reddit.com]

  • Learn some basic English language skills and perhaps you wouldn't say the opposite of what you mean.

  • by Beeftopia ( 1846720 ) on Sunday May 26, 2024 @09:56PM (#64501463)

    When I hear about using high-energy acoustics underwater, I have to wonder about how it will impact marine life, including cetaceans (whales, dolphins) [science.org].

    I want the plane to be found but also don't want to be cavalier with the lives of marine creatures.
       

    • Do you want to spend half a day of your life reading the relevant policy documents form the marine companies (who own the ships), the oil companies (who hire them) and the nationalities in whose water they're operating, on the subject of conducting acoustic operations generally, and the rest of the day on the addenda concerning operations where cetaceans are known (or suspected) to be present. I can tell you, it is really, really boring reading.

      The odds of a high profile proposal like this not sticking str

    • by kackle ( 910159 )
      We must find these dead bodies at all costs. /s
  • Is that measured in person-hours? Because they've been searching for Amelia Earhart's plane for 86 years!

The only perfect science is hind-sight.

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