Finding MH370

Closing the Search Box [S2Ep21 audio]

Finding MH370

Show Notes

The ocean is a big place. So maybe it isn’t that surprising that MH370 wasn’t found.At least, that’s what you hear a lot of people say.It’s pretty widely accepted among the general public that the seabed search failed because, well, the ocean is big, why wouldn’t it be hard to find a plane in it?But actually, the scientists who defined the search area had good reason to think that they knew where the plane had flown to, with a pretty good degree of accuracy. In today’s episode, we discuss how Australian scientists wrestled with the Inmarsat data, trying and discarding several approaches before settling on a method that allowed them to state, with mathematical certainty, where the seabed search would find the plane.That search, of course, failed. But math is math — if the calculations failed to yield the correct location of the plane, there must be a reason why. A branch of statistics called Bayesian inference offers guidance on what to do next. Get full access to Finding MH370 at www.deepdivemh370.com/subscribe

More from Finding MH370

Oct 21, 2026

A newly recovered drifter buoy from Mauritius shows for the first time how barnacles like the ones found on MH370's flaperon grow during more than two years at sea. The new data suggests a new methodology for determining how long the debris floated in the sea -- and whether it's plausible that the plane really did crash land in the remote ocean.

Oct 5, 2026

The ocean is vast -- but the range of possible places that MH370 could be is limited, constrained by evidence and the plane's performance. Today's experiment lets us define that area, and thereby determine just how much effort it would take to solve the case once and for all.

Sep 16, 2026

The ocean is huge, but the range of places that MH370 could be is tightly constrained, and recent searches have made it even smaller. Today we discuss where the noose has tightened down to, and where Ocean Infinity will look.

Aug 27, 2026

If you want to find an airliner on the seabed, you could do worse than to talk to someone who's already done. I interview underwater search expert Tony Romeo about how he used a high-tech submersible to locate a long-missing Pan Am airliner in the sea off Puerto Rico, and why he thinks he can do the same for MH370.

Aug 9, 2026

A Pan Am airliner lay on the seabed near Puerto Rico for more than 70 years until Russ Matthews and his team located it. He tells us how they did it.

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