Australians examine new leads for links to missing Malaysian Airlines jet
Researchers at Curtin University in Western Australia are conducting analysis on an unusual sound recorded at the time of the disappearance as new witness comes forward
A team of Australian researchers looking into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 released data on Wednesday about an unusual underwater sound recorded around the time the plane vanished, though the lead scientist acknowledged the chances it is linked to the jet are slim.
The low-frequency sound was picked up by underwater listening devices in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia on March 8, the same day the Boeing 777 disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board. Researchers at Curtin University in Western Australia have been analysing the signal to see if it may be the sound of the plane crashing into the ocean.
“It’s one of these situations where you find yourself willing it all to fit together but it really doesn’t.”
But Alec Duncan, who’s heading up the research, said the sound appears to have originated well outside the jet’s projected flight path that officials determined based on satellite and radar data, and is therefore unlikely to have come from the plane.
“It’s one of these situations where you find yourself willing it all to fit together but it really doesn’t,” said Duncan, senior research fellow with Curtin’s Centre for Marine Science and Technology. “I’d love to be able to sit here and say, ‘Yeah, we’ve found this thing and it’s from the plane’ – but the reality is, there’s a lot of things that make noise in the ocean.”
The noise could have come from a natural event, such as a small earthquake, Duncan said. He put the chances of it being linked to Flight 370 at less than 20 per cent.
