Signals from underwater microphones could be the key to finding missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 – a decade on from the biggest mystery in aviation history. Since its disappearance on 8 March 2014 while travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, theories of what happened to MH370’ s 239 passengers and crew have been extensively evaluated. Now, researchers from Cardiff University believe they have identified a signal from a hydrophone (underwater microphone) from the final stage of the aircraft’s journey in the Southern Indian Ocean.
“Violent” ocean impacts, such as the crash of a Boeing 777-200 aircraft, create acoustic signatures that can travel across the water to hydrophones on the seabed. If the flight crashed at a speed of 200 metres a second, Cardiff researchers estimate that the crash would have released as much kinetic energy as a small earthquake. The 7th arc area of the official search zone – where MH370 is thought to have crashed – is less than 2,000km from a hydroacoustic station at Cape Leeuwin in Australia .
A weak six-second signal was recorded at Cape Leeuwin within the time frame suggested by the search, but researchers say other signals might be confirmed as related if efforts to locate the aircraft were revisited. Another hydroacoustic station, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean was also operational at the time of MH370 ’s disappearance. Dr Usama Kadri, a reader at Cardiff University’s School of Mathematics, said: “Our analysis shows .
