A CHILLING underwater boom could be the final ever trace of MH370 – and finally solve the 10-year mystery, an engineer said.
The Malaysian Airlines flight disappeared from flight radar screens on March 8th 2014 as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people onboard.
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The plane’s disappearance sparked the biggest search in aviation history and to this day the wreckage of the jet, presumed to have crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean, remains undiscovered.
Many theories have emerged in the ten years since it vanished, including the possibility of a depressurized cabin sparking a ghost flight into oblivion or a suicidal pilot carrying out a perfect ditching.
The official MH370 narrative suggests the plane made a bizarre U-turn, flying across Malaysia, turning northwest at Penang Island and across the Andaman Sea.
Data from military radar and satellite data revealed that the plane flew on for hours towards the Southern Indian Ocean where it crashed in an unknown location.
Underwater robotics company Ocean Infinity revealed to The Sun that they had recently submitted a new search proposal to the Malaysian Government to hunt for the jet.
If signed off, it could begin in November this year and take three months to complete, according to reports.
The Sun spoke to Dr Usama Kadri, a professor of maths and engineering at Cardiff University, who believes that underwater microphones, known as hydrophones, could be key to finding the doomed jet’s final resting place.
As part of a study that analysed hundreds of hours of hydrophone data from previous plane crashes into the world’s oceans – he believes one eerie split-second noise could be the last ever trace of MH370.
Usama explains that the only way to know for sure would be to conduct an experiment imitating the impact of the crash on the ocean’s surface as suggested by the official narrative.
Talking to The Sun exclusively, he says the outcome of this experiment would finally take us “one step closer to the truth”.
Speaking about the chilling boom, Dr Kadri said: “If you want to listen to it[MH370 sound] it has to be in the audible range.
“These signals normally are somewhere between 2 hertz and 40 hertz, but if it’s below 20 hertz you can’t hear anything.
He explains that he can make the sound 40 times faster so that it’s audible – but that it would make the noise just a fraction of a second long.
He adds: “The problem with these signals [MH370sound] is that they are already short.”
He describes the sound as more of a chilling feeling that travels through your body – he says to imagine a very deep organ sound but with an even lower frequency.
Hydrophones can detect ocean sounds from all directions with 11 stations set up around the world to monitor submarines, marine animals and underwater earthquake and volcano activity.
Having previously worked on underwater sound waves, Usama took an interest in the search for MH370 and reached out to the official search team based in Australia in 2014.
Usama and his team set about analysing hundreds of hours worth of hydrophone data from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization’s (CTBTO) hydroacoustic stations.
The treaty aims to create a world free of nuclear testing and uses microphones to monitor any underwater nuclear explosions or activity.
The devices are also able to pick up noise from plane crashes such as the Air France flight 447 tragedy that killed all 228 onboard when the jet plunged into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
Why is MH370 still missing a decade on?
By Rebecca Husselbee, Assistant Foreign Editor
When an entire plane with 239 passengers mysteriously disappeared from the sky it left the world in utter disbelief – myself included.
How could an entire jet vanish into oblivion in a modern world when every move on land, sea and air is tracked? And how could it remain lost for a decade?
Having spent the last few years exploring the many theories on what MH370’s final moments might look like, from the bizarre to the complex, there is one hypothesis that answers every question for me.
Pilot Simon Hardy has left no stone unturned in his search for answers and having been at the helm of passenger flights for over 20 years he knows every inch of a Boeing 777 cockpit.
What makes his “technique, not a theory” even more compelling is his ability to access the world’s best flight simulators and sit in Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s seat as he commandeered the Malaysia Airlines and flew into the middle of the Southern Indian Ocean.
While others believe WSPR technology holds the key to finally discovering the wreckage, it’s never been proven and many in the MH370 community have questioned its reliability.
Many experts agree that the “suicidal” MH370 pilot was behind the plane’s demise – what we’ll never know is what his mindset was on that night and what motive he had to carry out such a chilling plan.
Passenger safety onboard in the aviation industry is rigorous and the likelihood of travellers being involved in a plane crash is 1 in 11 million.
But are airlines considering a pilot’s mental state when they sit at the controls of a jet that could be turned into a 300-ton death machine?
Hydrophone were also able to detect signals from the Argentinian Navy San Juan Submarine after it vanished and was later thought to have imploded in 2017.
Usama said: “From the initial analysis it looked like we might get something [a signal].
“That was the point that I contacted the Australian team heading up the search.
“I told them about the approach and that maybe we can try to find some lower frequency [noise] coming from the event. I think they liked the idea.
“Then we shared the hydrophone data for the specific time frame.”
The closest hydro station to the possible crash site was Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia followed by another station on the mysterious United States Indian Ocean naval base island, Diego Gracia.
MYSTERY SIGNAL
There appeared to be one unidentified event in an area known as the Seventh Arc that was picked up at the Leeuiwn station.
The Seventh Arc is an area of the ocean where the last known satellite communication with MH370 occurred.
Talking about the study previously, Dr Kadri said: “A 200-tonne aircraft crashing at a speed of 200 metres per second would release the kinetic energy equivalent to a small earthquake.
“It would be large enough to be recorded by hydrophones thousands of kilometres away.”
But Dr Kadri explains that his initial analysis focused on a very narrow window of around ten minutes – a timeframe determined by the official narrative.
However, the signal picked up near the Seventh Arc at the Leeuiwn station didn’t exactly fit with the crash timeline and was just slightly outside the timeframe.
Dr Kadri believes the search would therefore have to be revisited to determine whether the chilling signal is really the last known trace of MH370.
Speaking to The Sun he said: “When we initially looked at the signals, we were looking in the direction of the Seventh Arc.
“According to the investigation we had to look within two hours and within these two hours…we had to look within a window of ten minutes.
“For me, that is a little bit too accurate because of all the uncertainty but that was the requirement.
“Within these ten minutes, we could not find anything from the Seventh Arc or the last communication [with the plane].
“If you allow a little bit longer, only tens of minutes more, there was a signal which came from the direction of the Seventh Arc and that signal was also highlighted by another[research] group.
“That was the only, the strongest signal actually, that was picked up from that direction.”
Despite the uncertainty around the origins of the eerie underwater sound, Dr Kadri says the noise can be used to determine the accuracy of the official narrative with a very “straightforward” experiment.
The professor has proposed a series of controlled underwater explosions or airgun fire along the Seventh Arc to see whether they can isolate a more precise location for MH370.
If the official narrative suggests the plane crashed in a specific location, within a narrow timeframe in a violent impact – then that impact can be recreated and the signals can be studied, claims Dr Kadri.
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He added: “Now we have three possibilities, the first is that we find for example a very strong signal. If we see that then we can say something must be wrong with the investigation.
“Why because we don’t see a strong signal in that timeframe at the location suggested.
“You’re saying that it must be this amount of energy. We released exactly the same amount of energy along the 7th arc in the same location you suggested with the same hydrophone station and we picked up a very strong signal that we did not pick up during MH370.
“So something must be wrong and you have to go back and redo the analysis. This is one step toward the truth.
“The other option would be that we see absolutely nothing. For whatever reason we see nothing.
“It would tell you to forget about the hydrophones, you cannot rely on them in the investigation anymore you have to focus on something else.
“It would also tell you that there is hope the investigation is correct because we didn’t find anything.
“The other option is that we pick up something very weak, which could look like something we already have.
“And then we can say, we have exactly the signal we’re looking for – this is MH370.
“This would be the only scenario where we could say the signal we have recorded is MH370.”
When asked if the weak signal could come from a possible ditching by the pilot he explains that it could be possible.
He said: “I have no way to separate one theory from the other, I can only deal with the acoustic part.
“I have no way to say if the official investigation is the right investigation or is the most accurate. But it is there.
“We do have the tool right now to check if it’s correct or not.”
Several searches and a series of blunders for the missing jet have found nothing but loved ones and experts pushing for a new investigation have been given a glimmer of hope.
We do have the tool right now to check if it’s correct or not
Dr Usama Kadri
Nearly a decade on, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said his country would be willing to reopen the investigation into the disappearance of the flight if there was compelling new evidence.
Underwater robotics company Ocean Infinity also confirmed to The Sun that a search proposal had been submitted to the Malaysian government and it’s believed a new hunt could begin as soon as the end of the year.
When asked if there were any plans to carry out his proposed experiment, Dr Kadri confirmed that he had been approached by someone working with Ocean Infinity as well as the Malaysian Government.
He says Ocean Infinity had plans to trial his experiment using computers to determine whether it would be worth a field study as suggested by the professor.
Dr Kadri says a study by the Malaysian government using the country’s navy and resources would take just weeks.
While a longer in-depth study using research ship could take years.
Ocean Infinity CEO Plunkett said: “We now feel in a position to be able to return to the search for missing aircraft MH370, and have submitted a proposal to the Malaysian government.
“Finding MH370 and bringing some resolution for all connected with the loss of the aircraft has been a constant in our minds since we left the southern Indian Ocean in 2018.
“Since then, we have focused on driving the transformation of operations at sea; innovating with technology and robotics to further advance our ocean search capabilities.
“This search is arguably the most challenging, and indeed pertinent one out there. We’ve been working with many experts, some outside of Ocean Infinity, to continue analysing the data in the hope of narrowing the search area down to one in which success becomes potentially achievable.
“We hope to get back to the search soon.”
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