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My thoughts exactly. I actually wasted a few minutes reading the story thinking there must be more nuance. The mention of "maneuvering erratically" and taking

by prosa 16y ago

My thoughts exactly. I actually wasted a few minutes reading the story thinking there must be more nuance. The mention of "maneuvering erratically" and taking off without headlights seems to further advance the simplest explanation... but everyone loves a good conspiracy theory.

pak 16y ago
Doesn't an airliner crashing into the ocean leave some trace? I would think there would be an oil slick, and some floating debris. There's a lot of stuff in an airplane that floats. Surely these things would be spotted by air or satellite.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  remember that air France jet that crashed in to the ocean a while ago and how much trouble they had to go through to even just find the thing in spite of having a pretty good idea where it went down ? Now imagine the same thing without a good idea of where it went down. The ocean is a pretty big place. Maybe some debris will wash up on a shore somewhere, but that might very well be half the world away from the crash site.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    Depending on where the crash is that floating debris may never end up ashore. Instead, it may end up shredded into pieces and floating just under the surface of the water in a mid-ocean gyre along with a crap-ton of other debris from who-knows-where. At that point it's like searching for a needle in a field full of haystacks that have been picked up by a tornado.
    - bombs 16y ago
      I'd say it's like searching in a needle in a needle stack. The amount of unidentifiable junk that ends up in ocean gyres from planes, boats and cars (!) is astounding.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Yep, it'll leave a trace. A huge trace probably several hundred square meters in size ... in a several million square kilometer area of ocean. Most of the debris would be on the ocean floor, the remainder would stay on the surface for a while before being dispersed and displaced by ocean currents. All of these bits and pieces are too small to be picked up by satellite unless you have a satellite already looking at the exact area where it is (very unlikely), and even then it may not be possible to distinguish it from any other random bit of debris in the ocean. Think about a comparable problem, finding shipwrecks on the ocean floor. The ocean floor is vast, the shipwreck is tiny, modern techniques rely on looking for the debris trail to focus the search for the shipwreck itself. But in these cases the advantage of the shipwreck remaining in one place and relatively unmodified are completely lost for debris on the surface, and there is far less of it. The oceans are big, the floating bits of a 727 are small.

by prosa 16y ago

pak 16y ago

Doesn't an airliner crashing into the ocean leave some trace? I would think there would be an oil slick, and some floating debris. There's a lot of stuff in an airplane that floats. Surely these things would be spotted by air or satellite.

jacquesm 16y ago
remember that air France jet that crashed in to the ocean a while ago and how much trouble they had to go through to even just find the thing in spite of having a pretty good idea where it went down ? Now imagine the same thing without a good idea of where it went down. The ocean is a pretty big place. Maybe some debris will wash up on a shore somewhere, but that might very well be half the world away from the crash site.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Depending on where the crash is that floating debris may never end up ashore. Instead, it may end up shredded into pieces and floating just under the surface of the water in a mid-ocean gyre along with a crap-ton of other debris from who-knows-where. At that point it's like searching for a needle in a field full of haystacks that have been picked up by a tornado.
  - bombs 16y ago
    I'd say it's like searching in a needle in a needle stack. The amount of unidentifiable junk that ends up in ocean gyres from planes, boats and cars (!) is astounding.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Yep, it'll leave a trace. A huge trace probably several hundred square meters in size ... in a several million square kilometer area of ocean. Most of the debris would be on the ocean floor, the remainder would stay on the surface for a while before being dispersed and displaced by ocean currents. All of these bits and pieces are too small to be picked up by satellite unless you have a satellite already looking at the exact area where it is (very unlikely), and even then it may not be possible to distinguish it from any other random bit of debris in the ocean. Think about a comparable problem, finding shipwrecks on the ocean floor. The ocean floor is vast, the shipwreck is tiny, modern techniques rely on looking for the debris trail to focus the search for the shipwreck itself. But in these cases the advantage of the shipwreck remaining in one place and relatively unmodified are completely lost for debris on the surface, and there is far less of it. The oceans are big, the floating bits of a 727 are small.