June 6th, 2009 – Air France flight 447 left Rio de Janeiro on May 31st, but never made it to its Parisian destination via Senegal. Instead, freak weather conditions downed the plain approximately 1,100 km off the coast of Brazil, a rough estimate at best. The official responses from implicated airports, Air France and the Brazilian gouvernment were unsurprising, we will hope for the best as we send out waves of reconnaissance crafts and rescue helicopters but there is very little chance anyone survived a 10 km high crash into the middle of the Atlantic. This stark reminder of airplane crashes’ universal fatality was then promptly forgotten by mainstream media in favour of some more wildly ridiculous false hope.
Throughout the week, more and more search vehicles were sent and news reports gave us the hopeful trail of radio signals, suspicious oil slicks and random debris. To say this is a needle in a haystack search is misleading; consider that the plane could be anywhere in a hundred kilometer radius and then consider that it can be anywhere down into a third dimension, hiding as far as 6 km on a dark and jagged seabed. Finally on June 5th, we were told some hard evidence pointed to the aquatic crash site, some floating debris. We all imagined a turbine or some fuselage boasting “447” on the side waiting to give up a black box and some perfectly preserved corpses waiting for a decent burial. Fast forward to today, June 6th, we are finally shown this “debris” and unfortunately told it did not come from the flight in question. And yes, this picture below is actually the crucial evidence they had, a non-descript wooden palette.
The media still holds out hope and pushes it onto the voyeuristic masses meanwhile any scientist could tell them that we probably won’t find anything this century. In fact, there are only 3 vehicles on this planet (all unmanned) that could even take a flashlight down to the seabed to painstakingly scrounge around for the plane (or pieces of it) crawling along like an old lady looking for her dentures in the dark…but instead of a bathroom counter it’s a few dozen football fields.
Forget about it
When thinking of downed crafts and recoveries, people may instantly evoke the “Titanic” find in the XXth century by James Cameron (or whatever). It must be said that this ship took decades to even find and it was in relatively shallow and clear water. A more appropriate parallel can coincidentally be found in the obscure pages of this week’s news.
In 2007, an American “deep sea treasure-hunting company” (no, I didn’t make that up) discovered the remains of the Mercedes, a Spanish naval frigate shipwrecked in 1804. Although buried in centuries of sediment and under a few kilometers of Atlantic Ocean, the Company followed ancient maps and investigative reports to forage around the seabed. With an incredible amount of luck, they fell upon what they were looking for as well as a bonus 500,000 Spanish gold and silver coins in the hull. The reason why it was in the news this week is that a US judge slapped the Company on the wrist and ordered them to return the Spanish ship and Spanish money to Spain (they will surely appeal under the US constitutional law of “finders keepers, losers weepers).
The first point here is that, despite great technological advances, the seafloor reaches down two kilometers further than Everest is high, we barely know how to even get there. We have built a few machines that can do the equivalent of scoop up sand with a colourful plastic beach shovel but we are extremely far from being able to survey anything down there at 1500 times the pressure we have at sea level. The second subsequent point then becomes that news services dishing out false hope (and as you have seen the word FALSE should be in meter-tall red letters) are just thoughtless little piggies cashing in on the misery of others and appealing to the darkest voyeur perversions of society.
…then again, they took this concept and made 9/11 their Woodstock. How can I be surprised now?
(Look at it, the Titanic was just begging for it - Evidence - The new Airbus models just look plain ridiculous.)
Throughout the week, more and more search vehicles were sent and news reports gave us the hopeful trail of radio signals, suspicious oil slicks and random debris. To say this is a needle in a haystack search is misleading; consider that the plane could be anywhere in a hundred kilometer radius and then consider that it can be anywhere down into a third dimension, hiding as far as 6 km on a dark and jagged seabed. Finally on June 5th, we were told some hard evidence pointed to the aquatic crash site, some floating debris. We all imagined a turbine or some fuselage boasting “447” on the side waiting to give up a black box and some perfectly preserved corpses waiting for a decent burial. Fast forward to today, June 6th, we are finally shown this “debris” and unfortunately told it did not come from the flight in question. And yes, this picture below is actually the crucial evidence they had, a non-descript wooden palette.
The media still holds out hope and pushes it onto the voyeuristic masses meanwhile any scientist could tell them that we probably won’t find anything this century. In fact, there are only 3 vehicles on this planet (all unmanned) that could even take a flashlight down to the seabed to painstakingly scrounge around for the plane (or pieces of it) crawling along like an old lady looking for her dentures in the dark…but instead of a bathroom counter it’s a few dozen football fields.
Forget about it
When thinking of downed crafts and recoveries, people may instantly evoke the “Titanic” find in the XXth century by James Cameron (or whatever). It must be said that this ship took decades to even find and it was in relatively shallow and clear water. A more appropriate parallel can coincidentally be found in the obscure pages of this week’s news.
In 2007, an American “deep sea treasure-hunting company” (no, I didn’t make that up) discovered the remains of the Mercedes, a Spanish naval frigate shipwrecked in 1804. Although buried in centuries of sediment and under a few kilometers of Atlantic Ocean, the Company followed ancient maps and investigative reports to forage around the seabed. With an incredible amount of luck, they fell upon what they were looking for as well as a bonus 500,000 Spanish gold and silver coins in the hull. The reason why it was in the news this week is that a US judge slapped the Company on the wrist and ordered them to return the Spanish ship and Spanish money to Spain (they will surely appeal under the US constitutional law of “finders keepers, losers weepers).
The first point here is that, despite great technological advances, the seafloor reaches down two kilometers further than Everest is high, we barely know how to even get there. We have built a few machines that can do the equivalent of scoop up sand with a colourful plastic beach shovel but we are extremely far from being able to survey anything down there at 1500 times the pressure we have at sea level. The second subsequent point then becomes that news services dishing out false hope (and as you have seen the word FALSE should be in meter-tall red letters) are just thoughtless little piggies cashing in on the misery of others and appealing to the darkest voyeur perversions of society.
…then again, they took this concept and made 9/11 their Woodstock. How can I be surprised now?
(Look at it, the Titanic was just begging for it - Evidence - The new Airbus models just look plain ridiculous.)
End.
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