After more than a decade, the mystery behind the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 remains unsolved. However, researchers at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom have proposed a novel plan to unravel it — sea explosions.
The MH 370 flight disappeared on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing in China
According to the findings of a study published in Scientific Reports, it is recommended that authorities conduct controlled underwater explosions along the 7th arc and monitor the resulting signals received at hydroacoustic stations in the surrounding area.
“The main search area at the 7th arc lies less than 2,000km away from the hydroacoustic station at Cape Leeuwin, Australia, with no impediments to filter out the signal,” Dr. Usama Kadri, Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University, said, adding that “further analysis and future research are therefore necessary to fully comprehend the detected signals and their implications for MH370’s disappearance.”
The MH 370 flight disappeared on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing in China. Despite a multi-nation search for several years, the whereabouts of the 239 people, including passengers and crew, remain unknown. According to Cardiff University’s official website, the research will focus on the airplane’s final journey in the Southern Indian Ocean and the hydrophone data of the last course, and it will search for the signals generated near the 7th arc, following the official search recommendations.
The researchers have reasoned that any violent impact in the ocean, like a plane crash, produces distinctive acoustic signatures that travel a long distance inside the water and are recorded by the hydrophone technology from varied locations at the seabed.
For this study, the researchers analyzed more than 100 hours of data captured by the hydrophones after 10 plane accidents and one submarine disappearance.