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Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Experts Unable To Replicate Inmarsat Analysis
McGruber (1417641) writes "The lynchpin of the investigation of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been the pings from the plane to one of Inmarsat's satellites. The pings are the sole evidence of what happened to the plane after it slipped out of radar contact. Without them, investigators knew only that the plane had enough fuel to travel anywhere within 3,300 miles of the last radar contact—a seventh of the entire globe. Inmarsat concluded that the flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean, and its analysis has become the canonical text of the Flight 370 search. It's the bit of data from which all other judgments flow—from the conclusive announcement by Malaysia's prime minister that the plane has been lost with no survivors, to the black-box search area, to the high confidence in the acoustic signals, to the dismissal by Australian authorities of a survey company's new claim to have detected plane wreckage. But scientists and engineers outside of the investigation have been working to verify Inmarsat's analysis and many say that it just doesn't hold up."
really?
From the beginning this MH370 disapearance is strange: the Malaysian many mistakes (why would they lie about the cockpit last words??), satellite analysis, to the discovery by georesonance of an aircraft thousands of miles north, on that same path calculated from satellite data (they couldn't say in March if the plane went north or south...)...
Sounds like the next time we'll hear about mh370, the plane will be on its way to a building near you...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The aircraft did not crash; it was hijacked by the US Government, and flown to Diego Garcia under remote control after all the passengers were killed by asphyxiation at 45,000 feet. After landing the plane was refuelled, its logos painted over/covered up, and its valuable cargo (next generation radios with SDR technology) removed. It then took off again and flew on to its final destination--probably Kandahar, Afghanistan--where it will be outfitted with a large bomb (read: nuke). It will then be flown into an American city to cause a 'false flag' attack which will be blamed on Iran, North Korea, etc, as a casus belli for World War 3.
I would tell you more but som....hang on, there's a knock at the door.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=lynchpin
they allowed cell phones to be used on planes we couldjust call them and say, wassup!
The author of the article claiming that experts cannot replicate the data appears to be the editor of a social science / STS journal, not by training an engineer. Although I don't myself know enough about the subject to be able to refute either the Inmarsat claims or this article's refutation, I think it's notable that the people supporting the claim are engineers who specialize in satellite stuff, while the person refuting the claim is what appears to be a philosopher; I'd also add that the author portrays himself as an "investigator working on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370", but this appears to be a self-assigned title rather than his position as part of any formal or professional investigation. Looking at the scholarship of the journal he edits, it appears to have some level of rigour--IE it does not appear to be a vanity publication, so I'm not trying to cast out the guy as a crank, just to caution that I think the strength and balance of the headline and the post here place an awful lot of confidence in the article's credibility.
If Inmarsat haven't released all of the data used in the analysis, why is anyone surprised that they can't recreate it?
Not so. These critics may or may not be correct when they raise several issues, including the plane seeming to be moving at a good clip before it was taking off. But on the most critical of factors, they're totally wrong:
"Recall that the Marco-Polo math alone doesn’t allow you to tell which direction pings are coming from. So how could Inmarsat claim to distinguish between a northern and southern path at all? The reason is that the satellite itself wasn’t stationary."
No, the slow drift of the satellite wasn't a factor. I've yet to hear Immarsat formal statement of their rationale, but their graph shows quite clearly what it was. Their reasoning hinges on the fact that the plane began its deviant flight above the latitude of the satellite. That is quite important.
If the plane flies northward along a relatively fixed course, the doppler shift will aways show it moving away (down doppler). However, it the plane flies southward on a steady course, there'll be a short time (one ping it turns out) when it is approaching the latitude of the satellite and thus giving a more up (or less down) doppler. That's what you see in the Immarsat chart. Once the aircraft has crossed the satellite's latitude, then its southward path will have it traveling away from the satellite just like the northern route. It's that notch DOWN at between 18:30 and 19:30 followed by a rise upward that says southbound.
That said the critics do raise some relevant issues and they do point out the Immarsat needs to release a detailed report with all their reasoning, so it can be more intelligently critiqued.
I've yet to see a reasonable explanation for the loss of telemetry and apparent maneuvers to avoid radar.
So far the implicit assumption is that whoever was at the controls failed in their plan and the plane crashed.
Considering the Indonesian 'navy' is a bunch of pirates, I would start by looking there.
We still don't know what was in the cargo hold or if there was a billionaire on board. Did that plane have a richer suite?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
40K people die every day of hunger and the while the USD 60M or more that were spent so far on this stupid search couldn't have prevented that, it would have helped a lot of people have another chance.
Either you say you care about the lives of people and then you just shake your head about this pointless waste of money or you don't care and then you wouldn't care about ML370 either. But you unless you're related or friends of anyone onboard that flight, you're just a for caring about the lives lost there and not about the people that die every day of hunger, war, and such...
Peter.
I think it's pretty interesting that a number of devices detected pings, but there is apparently (as per the article) nothing was found in the area where they heard the pings.
So what did they hear? How can you get a false positive on a listening device looking for a specific frequency?
I wonder if instead of just sending out pings, a black box when hitting water should send out a burst of broad spectrum very high powered radio waves that satellites around the globe could detect...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The satellite transponder is just an amplifier and a modulator, things go up one frequency and come down another frequency and louder. The satellite and the transmitter are in motion relative to each other and the receiver. Hence there is Doppler and my understanding is that the analysis of the Inmarsat data was based on this Doppler. So does Inmarsat record and retain sufficiently detailed information about every signal sent through their satellites such that they can deduce their findings from analysis of played back signals, or are they managing the receiver in this case and analyzing the log from the receiver.
Nullius in verba
In a world where spy satellites have 1m resolution, the fact that no country says they found anything within a few days, speaks loudest.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
If we're going to entertain the notion of a cover up, the most plausible theory in my mind is it was hijacked, and later intercepted by fighter jets from some country's air force and shot down. There's plenty of reasons for keeping that scenario a secret.
Like the signal reflecting off the ocean below instead of coming directly from the aircraft.
The only sure way to is to duplicate the flight path with a similar size aircraft using the same Engines and monitoring stations, using similar SAT positions. Only this time use a plane with extended range 777-200LR(verses missing 777-200ER) with minimal payload&maximum fuel and/or safely replicate the flight path in sections.
Use the resulting SAT/GPS data to help calibrate mh377 final resting spot.
They are already writing their books, guaranteed
The entities that have the data are not credible and those who might be credible do not have all the data. What's a poor boy to do?
I thought I was on Slashdot, but it looks like I accidentally went to CNN.
In view of the 911 airplane attacks, why is there still an ON/ OFF switch on the airplanes transponder. Any aircraft not on the ground should be in direct contact wit the ground traffic controllers – no switch – no exceptions!
It's the simple explanation. Electrical fires on airplanes are often hard to identify until they're catastrophic, cause systems to fail in manners which defy the logic beat into you in the sim (think fucked up telemetry), and are treated by, as a first step, killing all electrical power on the jet. Making a turn when overwater to where you know land is close makes very good sense, and if it was cloudy or dark or both, missing it was fatal.
Did the USA Accidentally Shoot Down MH370 off Diego Garcia? link: http://dissention.wordpress.co...
Because that makes so much more sense than just buying a used 1980s airliner for a couple of million bucks.
analysis. An anti-Inmarsat analysis annointed another answer anew.
Why wouldn't the Iranians simply build a nuke here, rather than try to fly one in?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I have never been on a flight where everyone has turned their cellular telephones off, especially international flights where you will see a passenger light up a cigarette while in their seat (not even sneaking a drag in the bathroom) before being kindly asked to extinguish it.
is it really possible that the plane landed anywhere but the ocean?
I would have to think so, yes. Spy satellites relying on cameras have limited coverage at any one time. The plane only has to land and move to a hanger to be hidden. That doesn't take very long.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Couldn't one look at the satellite ping data from MH370 from a week earlier or whenever the latest "good" flight was and compare ping data of the doomed flight? Also look at ping data from a flight that matches close to the flight path of the projected path of the doomed flight and see if satellite ping theory is actually plausible. That's one way to narrow down the possibilities.
I would have to think so, yes. Spy satellites relying on cameras have limited coverage at any one time. The plane only has to land and move to a hanger to be hidden. That doesn't take very long.
The number of suitable hangars with suitable runways to land on nearby is pretty limited. Maybe all of them should simply be checked.
Or any of the millions of shipping containers roaming around the world every day, for a few grand.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
The article is irrelevant since the ocean floor around the pings is still being searched.
Since the article can't even get a basic fact correct, I don't even trust their analysis.
FTA:
But now the search of 154 square miles of ocean floor around the signals has concluded with no trace of wreckage found. Pessimism is growing as to whether those signals actually had anything to do with Flight 370. If they didn’t, the search area would return to a size of tens of thousands of square miles.
The link the article uses to "prove" that says something different:
The hunt for a missing Malaysian passenger jet entered a new phase as an international team abandoned its aerial search and said efforts to find wreckage on the ocean floor may take as long as eight months.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
It looks like slashdot just linked to another conspiracy theory. Please quit doing that.
Should be tied to a motor. So if they want. they can shut it down - and have a reduced reach of the plane. Besides, a small device can easily be made fire proof or equipped with sensors to turn itself off in case of (autonomous) fire detection. There actually is a device, already, that can't be turned off by the crew in flight - a black box.
Until officials provide more information, the claim that Flight 370 went south rests not on the weight of mathematics but on faith in authority
Wasn't the main evidence against a northern path the fact that the plane would have to have flown over some (unlike Malaysia) heavily monitored airspace?
The company claimed that they have confirmed their methodology using data from other airplanes flying in similar area.
No sig today.
One ping I could easily see being some aberration. But I remember reading one of the detectors, I think it was the Australians, hearing a series of pings.
As the other poster said, the ping can't really be that far from you as the water dampens the signal (ha!) quite a bit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The number of suitable hangars with suitable runways to land on nearby is pretty limited. Maybe all of them should simply be checked.
That's been considered, and I assume the checks would already have been completed.
You can see all the known runways on this map: http://i.imgur.com/Iwa6Ali.jpg
The rest of the discussion here is interesting as well. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Keep spending, world. A hundred mil? Not enough. We've got to find that plane! It feeds CNN, after-all.
More specifically, it collapsed as though the FIRST floor could no longer support the weight of the entire building on top of it. You can see that in the videos.
You can see the exact same thing in your kitchen if you have a gas stove. I know it's more fun to read spy stories than to actually try an experiment, but just know that I'm going to ignore any replies from you until you try the experiment yourself.
Go get a few wire coat hangers or similar metal wire, and some pans. In your kitchen, set up some wire supports to hold a pan four inches above the flame. Try to make the supports symmetrical, like the way a professional building would be designed. Pretend that the wire costs a million dollars per inch, so you'll use the minimum amount of wire necessary to hold the pan up. A bundt cake pan or something with a central opening would be the best simulation, simulating the center elevator columns.
Also keep in mind WTC 7 was tricky to design because the first couple of floors were built around / over an existing power station, so it was designed to use fewer, stronger supports than most buildings would. (You can't put a 40' wide support column right through a part of the power station).
Once the first pan is in place, add three more "floors" (pans), so you have four or more floors, each a few inches apart.
Now tturn the fire on high and wait 5-15 minutes. What Wil happen is that the heat will soften the metal supports just a bit at first, then more so as they heat up. At some point (as high as 500-600 degrees), they'll get soft enough that they collapse under the weight of all those pans. The stack will drop, just like WTC 7.
I KNOW yyou want to argue with me right now. That's cool, you can do that. But first, go in your kitchen and give it a try. Then you can argue from actual knowledge as opposed to repeating silly ghost stories about topics you're unfamiliar with.
Or a US nuke disguised as an Iranian. Or better yet an iranian nuke disguised as a US nuke disguising as an Iranian.
By the way, what Freescale releasrd in February was the world's smallest ARM processor, just 2mm square. It's also the world's most efficient, meaning best battery life. Tiny ARM processors are used in all manner of consumer electronics. Tiny processors aren't really helpful in big devices like "military radar". Size is key in portable devices like smart watches and medical applications such as pacemakers.
Until officials provide more information, the claim that Flight 370 went south rests not on the weight of mathematics but on faith in authority
Wasn't the main evidence against a northern path the fact that the plane would have to have flown over some (unlike Malaysia) heavily monitored airspace?
I reckon you could use terrain masking along the Himalayas.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They'd have to have flown over Bangladesh, Myanmar completely undetected, and even once they're there India keeps its airspace very well monitored.
why? ask her.
1. It was accidentally shot down somewhere.The country that found out about if first or has something to do with it is staying quiet because it could start a war. 2. It was forced to land somewhere, the passengers were taken hostage and that country is keeping quiet about it because it could start a war.
The "molten" stories trace back to two original sources. One is describing what they saw, the other is describing a photo. Both refer to red hot beams in the days after. An exact quote is "lifting a molten steel beam". Obviously if it were truly molten, it wouldn't be a beam anymore and noone would be lifting it.
This makes sense, because there's nothing that would maintain molten steel for weeks. About the only things that could do that would be certain types of fault lines or an underground coal seam. Some silly people who have clearly never messed around with thermite have mentioned thermite as if it had some magical properties. From someone who HAS made thermite, I can tell you it burns several milliseconds, not several weeks. That's how it gets so hot - by releasing all of its energy quickly.
Your local auto shop or machine shop can put a piece of brick or concrete in their 20,000 pound press and you can see it turn to dust. Or just hit a piece with a big hammer. Now imagine MILLIONS of pounds crashing down, rather than a two pound hammer.
Troll? Flamebait? Off-topic maybe, but the other mods are mod abuse. Unless Kevin's trying to resurrect the Great Slashdot "Linchpin vs. Lynchpin" Flamewar that I somehow missed, a question about a word with two valid spellings shouldn't qualify.
We don't know they were undetected, and in any event, primary radar is short range. Without transponders it is fairly easy to evade.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Okay, so both spellings exist, but they're not on equal footing.
http://grammarist.com/spelling...