
Ocean Microphones May Have Recorded Lost Malaysian Jet's Crash - sagitariusrex
https://www.livescience.com/64861-lost-malaysia-mh370-crash-site-sounds.html
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ximeng
[http://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2018/11/17/ocean-infinity-
fi...](http://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2018/11/17/ocean-infinity-finds-
argentine-submarine-after-not-finding-mh370/)

“Unfortunately, the acoustics generated by the impact of MH370 on the ocean
surface would not propagate along the “deep sound channel” (DSC) the way an
underwater acoustic event does, so the impact likely was not detected by CTBTO
sensors.” - suggests this is unlikely, although not detailed explanation

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djsumdog
They probably don't have the money or influence to get a search crew out there
and are hoping this report will encourage some other treasure hunting group to
check it out and confirm/reject their theory.

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blakesterz
"But just how long the Boeing 777 jet could have stayed airborne would depend
on its actual flight path, its altitude and how many of its four engines were
operating."

Don't the 777s have 2 engines?

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lstodd
3 including the APU

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turtlegrids
4 including the Ram Air Turbine (RAT)

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willyt
The RAT is not an engine and doesn’t deploy unless all other engines have
shutdown in flight, and it induces drag because it’s a kind of ‘wind turbine’
that drops into the airstream and generates electrical power (and maybe
hydraulic pressure)

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spdustin
You got that backwards; it “powers” hydraulics, and in some (uncommon) cases,
supplies electrical power to other systems.

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markoman
I'm surprised that no mention was made of the U.S. Navy's network of
hydrophones (SOSUS) and whatever took its place in the late 1990s. SOSUS was
quite successful at detecting a number of Russian submarines since the 1950s
with every new generation thereof. In any event, I can only imagine that there
would be U.S. government resources (military and otherwise) that could have
provided some surveillance information on what happened to the Malaysian 777
airliner.

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spectramax
I wonder how much information, if any, is withheld by military organizations
in various countries. I presume a particular country doesn’t want to give away
their latest radar capabilities or what have you by disclosing tracking
information whether it’s through satellite systems or through sub-ocean sonar.

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sho
> I wonder how much information, if any, is withheld by military organizations
> in various countries.

Ooh, I can answer that. All of it, unless forced to disclose by political
factors. There is no upside to the military to releasing anything, ever.

HN is a geekfest, and I'm a geek too. I could not, and still cannot,
comprehend how resistant to the "helpfulness instinct" a military man is. I,
by my very nature, cannot resist helping people whereever i can, and offering
whatever information I might judge useful whenever I can. The military [1] is
the exact opposite of that. It's hard to get your head around.

I have zero doubt that one or more militaries in the area, especially
Singapore, know exactly where MH370 went, or at least what direction it
eventually took off in. Every radar in the world is recording 24/7\. They have
no incentive whatsoever to divulge what they undoubtably know. We'll find out
in a few decades, probably.

[1] and many large corporations.

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pgeorgi
> I have zero doubt that one or more militaries in the area, especially
> Singapore, know exactly where MH370 went, or at least what direction it
> eventually took off in.

There were so many cranks producing ideas where MH370 went, they could have
just used one of those as a front by "backing" a theory that happens to be
nearby the point where they have to search, gently nudging the search closer
to where it really is and score tons of points for being first in a huge
international search effort.

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sho
What I was trying to get across in my comment is that the military, in
general, does not care in the slightest about those "points". They will not
release anything unless specifically and explicitly forced to and needless to
say they have not been. They are quite happy to watch other governments, or
even their own government, waste millions of dollars looking in the wrong
place. Correcting them is not in their mission statement and, frankly, not
even part of their thinking.

The whole area is one of the most densely packed geopolitical zones in the
world. It beggars belief that multiple parties did not observe, in detail, the
whole thing. It was not a stealth aircraft. Fucking Australia probably saw it.
I am quite certain Singapore did.

Like I said, we'll probably hear all about it in a few decades.

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pgeorgi
> or even their own government

I guess it depends on the relationship between government and military, but
how common is it for the government to ask all its appropriate organizations
(intelligence services, military, weather service, semi-military maritime
research orgs) if they have anything about it and for all those organizations
to lie?

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fromthestart
>But the ocean is a noisy place, and Kadri said the underwater sounds might
have also been caused by underwater earthquakes...

Seismic is rough. Even large earthquake events are localized with large error
because of constant noise - seismic event arrivals are hard to pinpoint
precisely in time. On top of that, once we have arrival times from a bunch of
seismometers(microphones) localization is an inversion problem, dependent on
velocity models for a rather heterogeneous earth which further reduces
location precision. Even worse, I doubt a crashing jet produces a large
magnitude (loud) seismic event, so picking out its arrival in noisy mic data
is even harder than it can be for shallow earthquakes.

I'd guess a radius on the order of thousands of miles at best, but it's all
contingent on how loud the event was and how noisy the mics that picked it up
are.

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edmundsauto
For the curious, & because I did the math for myself:

1k mile radius is 3.14 million square miles. The oceans are 140 million square
miles.

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Neil44
How frequent are these gravity events during a time period when an airliner
isn’t crashing?

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zyztem
Previous analysis of CTBTO hydrophone data (augmented with IMOS, Australian
SOSUS clone) back in 2014: [https://www.nature.com/news/sound-clue-in-hunt-
for-mh370-1.1...](https://www.nature.com/news/sound-clue-in-hunt-for-
mh370-1.15390)

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GrumpyNl
With all those satellites in the air, they should able to trace it.

