"Given that after nearly two years only a single piece of debris had heretofore been found, it’s extraordinary that in the span of less than two weeks three pieces of possible MH370 debris have come to light."
I would think that would be expected. I would expect more than once piece would be carried by the same currents that deposited the first piece.
Additionally, now that people know where to look, they will be on the lookout. Nobody Venice Beach, California, for example, is on the lookout for plane debris, while I bet everyone on the Mozambique coast is.
1) Missing pieces of a plane that disapeared and probably crashed in an unknown location in the Indian Ocean suddenly turn up near each other, lacking barnacles, etc.
2) Someone is sick enough to perpetrate a fraud to get attention or for other reasons.
In the case of very unlikely events, #2 is unfortunately always a serious alternative hypothesis.
Going on what we know (sod all), it seems just as likely that the lack of barnacles is down to different materials between the pieces.
Maybe some pieces are too smooth or the wrong flavour? The photo with barnacles attached seems to show them aggregating on the framework and edges only, so maybe they just don't like the paint.
I'd expect a lot of parts to show up together due to the action of tides and currents.
Barnacles tend to aggregate on pretty much anything - smooth or no. Talk to any boat owner.
The only reason they'd be barnacle free is if the paint is in some way ablative, and comes off in layers - which is how marine anti-barnacle paint works - it's very unlikely they'd lack them otherwise.
There is also paint that is poisonous to the barnacles- that's how anti-barnacle paint used to work in the marine industry. But having all of that poison (for example, lead was famously used back in the day) was determined to not be good for the our environmental health.
Since planes are in a different environment, it's possible that they use paint that is toxic to barnacles (but perhaps is otherwise unsuitable as marine bottom paint).
> Someone is sick enough to perpetrate a fraud to get attention or for other reasons.
The entire interest in the 370 is purely entertainment.
Missing planes, who's occupants are dead and we can learn nothing from are much more interesting than poor African kids, who are yet to, but will die of simple stoppable issues.
If someone faked this picture it's no more sick than this original interest. (And also unlikely, it's a boring punk)
As a software developer, I really appreciate the work the airlines and authorities put in after each accident.
I've read a couple of reports. Quite apart from the issue of saving people's lives, it's good to see the work of someone who someone takes bugs seriously. They never seem to say "let's see if it happens again", "maybe it was a one-off, let's reboot" or "let's upgrade, maybe it's fixed in the latest version".
The report I read most recently described a chain of seven mistakes and other problems, described which ones combined and how, discussed how each of the seven could be prevented and/or made less likely, whether each of the actions was likely to be a net improvement, and finally made recommendations.
IMO, those of us who work with bugs should read one of those reports every so often, just to see/remind us how an unlimited-resources, all-dials-at-11 incident post mortem looks.
My question is why is it that this level of diligence is
applied to the civil aviation industry, and not to something like cars and buses which kill way more people per distance travelled.
My guess would be it's because people like to blame somebody else. If it's a plane then there are large organisations to blame i.e. the airline and the manufacturer. While with cars almost always the blame is with the driver i.e. the people. When it's a manufacturer's fault however nobody bats an eye if they have to recall 500,000 cars to install something that would decrease the risk by 1/10th the amount if everybody uses seatbelts.
Aviation industry accident investigation practices were adopted from the railway industry. Back in the mid-to-late 19th century, train accidents killed about as many travellers per capita as road traffic accidents in the 1950s. So the industry adopted a set of principles: no-blame impartial accident enquiries managed by an independent board who would deliver a report on the causes of the accident along with recommendations for best practice to avoid it recurring. Upshot: rail passenger travel is now by far the safest form of land travel.
Bear in mind that a Boeing 777 like the one that went missing on flight MH370 costs on the order of $200M. You then have potential liability for the passengers (if the airline made culpable/criminal mistakes) of maybe $2-4M per head, for up to 400 pax on a 777 -- they're big (MH370 had only 239 people on board) and you're looking at a billion dollar accident. The airlines and manufacturers thus have a huge incentive not to let this happen again.
(Compare to a car accident: 90% or thereabouts are down to human error, and the vast majority of fatal ones "only" involve a couple of deaths, capping the potential liability two orders of magnitude lower.)
In journalism we use the phrase "deaths per mile" to rank importance of a story. A story with death within 1 mile of you is equally important to you than story of 100 deaths 100miles away from you.
In that sense a large number of people are "affected" (as in likely to click/read the story) if 300 people on a plane die 1000 miles away than 1000 people dying in different accidents over longer period in my home state.
When there is public perception the government and politicians want to step in and want show that they are doing something. That something is more regulations and more checks. That makes air travel expensive and more safe.
They can be if they're serious enough. Planes and trains carry enough people/other stuff to usually warrant the independent investigator to step in. Buses are sort of there. Cars aren't.
You can either have a good team of people drill down into the root causes of a particular mass-transit failure, or you can have them suffer the death of a thousand cuts by investigating every nose-to-tail collision on a highway because people get distracted. One's worth far more to society.
Actually the main reason that we're striving to find this plane is so that we can find out what exactly happened, in order to ensure it won't happen again to the other planes.
You are understating the need so solve the mystery. The black box is out there somewhere. If enough debris is found maybe it will help investigators calculate the origin of the crash.
That thing where you're trying to shame people because they have interest in one thing while there's some horrible problem in the world needs to be solved, is a bit of an old troll. "We're curing erectile dysfunction while people are dying of other diseases. What's wrong with you people?"
So when you eat breakfast lunch and dinner do you spend 1 hour feeling sick to your stomach about all poor people suffering on Earth or do you have peace of mind like most of us do?
A lot of us find plane crashes are interesting for the same reasons that we read or watched detective stories etc at some point, only plane crashes and other real world events are far more interesting to me at least.
That doesn't mean we don't care about Africa. Some of us do and it might be helpful for you to know that to mea at least you come off as judging and not as someone I'd like to work with on those matters.
If these pieces were on the shore for a while, it's normal that you won't find any barnacles on them. Walk on any beach that isn't regularly cleaned, you will find all kinds of marine garbage - pieces of plastic, rope, never any barnacles.
They do look suspiciously clean - 2 years in salt water under the sun. But I have no idea how good airplane paint is in resisting to either.
Wasn't part of the tail end found almost a year ago? It was such a convincing report and the odds that the part came off MH370 were very high. But then it got quiet and fell into the abyss. I don't want to dive into conspiracy theories here but something just doesn't seem right with this crash. Either there are plenty of hoaxers out there or something bigger is happening.
Yes, there are human remains on sunken ships. You may simply google it. Caution： you may feel uncomfortable if you click the link. Here are some photos about the human remains on the sunken ships.
where could it have possibly gone....was this the result of a suicidal pilot or just accident...it's boggling that we can track anyone anywhere but not a huge plane like this
Tracking, or finding an aircraft over a large ocean area is still not possible. As this article says[1], "About 85,000 square kilometres of the 120,000 square kilometre search zone has been covered so far." But if you match that against the map of the search area, you will see that even that huge search area covers only a narrow strip of ocean.
The plane may be huge, but compared to the earth, it is very, very small.
Also, much of the MH370 search area includes some very rugged seafloor. If or when it sank, the wreckage may be located in the underwater equivalent of very mountainous terrain. Just like above water, it's a lot easier to find something in the desert (abyssal plain) than in the mountains.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/missing-flight-...
While I appreciate your point A for optical wavelengths, space based radar is definitely a thing. Optical wavelengths are undoubtedly more popular however.
In aeronautics, component lifecycle tracking is dead serious business - hence even some trivial parts are individually identified, much more than in any other industry.
I would think that would be expected. I would expect more than once piece would be carried by the same currents that deposited the first piece.
Additionally, now that people know where to look, they will be on the lookout. Nobody Venice Beach, California, for example, is on the lookout for plane debris, while I bet everyone on the Mozambique coast is.