Most of the speculation could be ended if the plane or flight recorders were found. I'm surprised that this day and age this should be so difficult. The methods I would apply are:
1) radio triangulation of airplane signals - weather conditions may not have been favourable, but if the automated messages were received by Airbus, surely they must have been registered with various military electronic listening posts to pin-point the last known position of the plane prior to impact.
2) impact detection using Hydroacoustic listening stations - according to articles these kind of devices can detect the explosion of 300kg TNT half way around the globe, so my thinking is that a high speed impact on a large plane on the surface of the Atlantic should not go unoticed. Also there seem to be >3 CTBTO stations available in the atlantic (http://www.ctbto.org/map) for this.
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Most of the speculation could be ended if the plane or flight recorders were found. I'm surprised that this day and age this should be so difficult. The methods I would apply are: 1) radio triangulation of airplane signals - weather conditions may not have been favourable, but if the automated messages were received by Airbus, surely they must have been registered with various military electronic listening posts to pin-point the last known position of the plane prior to impact. 2) impact detection using Hydroacoustic listening stations - according to articles these kind of devices can detect the explosion of 300kg TNT half way around the globe, so my thinking is that a high speed impact on a large plane on the surface of the Atlantic should not go unoticed. Also there seem to be >3 CTBTO stations available in the atlantic (http://www.ctbto.org/map) for this.