Due to length part 16 was locked for further contributions. Please feel free to continue your discussion in part 17.

MH370 Malaysian Airlines B777-200ER missing enroute KUL-PEK (by Longhornmaniac Mar 7 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysian Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 2 (by LipeGIG Mar 7 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysian Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 3 (by SA7700 Mar 8 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysian Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 4 (by SA7700 Mar 8 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysian Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 5 (by SA7700 Mar 8 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysian Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 6 (by SA7700 Mar 9 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 7 (by SA7700 Mar 9 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines 772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 8 (by jetblueguy22 Mar 9 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 9 (by SA7700 Mar 10 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 10 (by SA7700 Mar 10 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 11 (by jetblueguy22 Mar 10 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 12 (by SA7700 Mar 10 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 13 (by SA7700 Mar 11 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 14 (by SA7700 Mar 11 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 15 (by jetblueguy22 Mar 11 2014 in Civil Aviation)
MH370 Malaysia Airlines B772 Missing Enroute KUL-PEK Part 16 (by SA7700 Mar 12 2014 in Civil Aviation)


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Regards and thanks for your co-operation,

Quoting AT (Reply 331): If it indeed turns out that these images were noted on Sunday but only released today, then, whatever the rationale, it is problematic.

As mentioned before, China deployed any imaging sats (I think they said 10) they had that could reach an orbit that could image this area, and they imaged the entire area on Mar 9. Since then they have presumably been looking at every single image, possibly (and hopefully, for their sake) aided by software that detects anomalies. Still a lot of human effort to reject pictures of clouds and such.

With a new sunrise and 12 or so hours of daylight let's hope that something is found today or that they can at least track down / confirm what that image was...

Alright, EVERYONE needs to stop using Tomnod.

I now see why they don't publish their coordinates. I have extracted at random a sampling of about 2,800 of the estimated 31,000 maps on Tomnod challenge (thanks to Kmot showing the API link. As you can see from the link below plotting them on Google Maps, the sampling on Tomnod is SOOOOOOOOOOO unbelievably small. Keep in mind when you see the map at first, you think it is just one dot. That is actually 3000 sampling points. Zoom in and you'll see what I am talking about.

I am going to extract more points if their servers don't catch on and limit it. But, sadly, a waste of time people.

http://borgmann.me/a/mh370

PS the X on the map shows where the Chinese satellite images are located.

[Edited 2014-03-12 16:59:11]

What the searchers need is something that can take high-resolution wide angle pictures in a certain area over a long period of time. Maybe it's time to deploy the RQ-4 Global Hawk flying at 60,000 feet and use that UAV's high-resolution cameras to find the remains of this 777.

Top of the morning to you a.nutters!

Here is rcair1's excellent summary from thread 16.

Sanity check.
I'm going to try to list what we know, not what we think - we being the public. And sadly it is very short.

- The ship took off normally and headed on course to Beijing
- The last comms were a normal handoff from Malaysia to Vietnam control.
- It was a normal 'good night' on the Malaysian side, but Vietnam was not contacted.
- The aircraft dropped off secondary radar with no communication from the cockpit.
- There is some reports of a descent and turn - based on primary radar.
- But there is confusion about the veracity of that.
- There is some confusion (in the press) about if the descent was 3000ft or to 3000ft
- There was a primary radar return tracked west over the Malacca straits.
- Since it is primarily - a reflection - we do not know that it is the accident a/c.
- We do not know if it was a track (multiple returns) or a few points returns.
- We have no ELT signal detected.

Based on this information - authorities are searching 2 areas - near the planned route and in the Malacca straight.
- Frankly - this is quite reasonable. You search where you have evidence the a/c may be.

There are lots of conspiracy theories out there - from the Malaysian government hiding something to pilot suicide, to hijacking to whatever.
- We have no data to support any of them.
- The breadth of the countries searching alone makes me discount many of the 'government is hiding it' aspects
- It is likely there are covert (secret) resources in the area that are trying to provide the info without revealing themselves.

We have lots of complaints about incompetence.
- I've been in and in command of large emergencies and been the one responsible to communicate to large groups.
- Even in the best situations, with cooperating agencies - it is easy to portray incompetence when what is really going on is hard work that is not providing the desired result.

There are lots of people talking about "mobile phones".
- We know that if any mobile phones were connected to the tower - we would have a location and would search there.
- We don't have any reports or evidence of that - so I conclude that it is not viable to consider.

We have had a lot of "false" sightings
- This is common and we need to investigate the credible ones. Most will be false.

In summary
We KNOW 3 things.
- The a/c disappeared from secondary radar and stopped communicating. We do not know why or what happened to it.
- There is some evidence that it traveled west. But that evidence is not conclusive or sure.
- We have not found it despite multiple governmental agencies from multiple countries searching hard.

That is all.


Answers to previous thread:

Captainx: Would the new FAA AD on the depressuriztion/break-up risk on the 777 cause loss of the transponder and comm antennas? One expert suggest that if the decomp event occurred and the pilots changed course prior to donning their masks then both pilots would likely pass out quickly and the plane would fly on the new course until it ran out of fuel. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/mis...rrosion-problem-boeing-777s-n50591
Answer: We've been over this. That AD does not apply to this particular plane since it did/does not have that antenna.

747megatop: What equipment does it take to detect the black box signals and what is the range of these signals? Answer: According to this link http://www.hydro-international.com/i...Deepwater_Black_Box_Retrieval.html they ping on acoustic 38.5 kHz (an audio signal) and a range of 2-3km.

747megatop: The biggest question/issue would be who would pay for all this!? To me it seems to be in the best interest of everyone to find out what happened and rule out any sinister plot. Answer: The insurance companies and Boeing have a vested interest in the investigation. Just throwing a number out there, US$100m operation cost sounds like a lot but if you think about it that is cheaper than a brand new 777.

planesmart: I think maybe the Malaysian authorities are being a little mischevious with their reporting. The aircraft was ACARS capable, but I'm guessing the airline does not use the facility. Answer: This has been covered. Please skim and search previous threads.

nupogodi: Welcome to the thread. Scroll up. Answer:         

hivue: How did France and Brazil do in the AF447 search? Answer: The political situation was a bit different. Far from territorial waters and those countries weren't regularly sniping at each other in ongoing territorial disputes.

Quoting 777Jet (Reply 2): or that they can at least track down / confirm what that image was...

That should be their main focus until they know what it is.

Quoting B747forever (Reply 5): Quoting 777Jet (Reply 2): or that they can at least track down / confirm what that image was... That should be their main focus until they know what it is.

Agreed. With all the uncertainty, the authorities should thoroughly follow such a lead...

Quoting suseJ772 (Reply 3): the sampling on Tomnod is SOOOOOOOOOOO unbelieveably small. Keep in mind when you see the map at first, you think it is just one dot. That is actually 3000 sampling points. Zoom in and you'll see what I am talking about.

Kinda puts the difficulty of SAR in the sea into perspective, doesn't it?

I think your China Sat location is wrong though - at least, it disagrees with the information and map on Avherald which puts it southeast of the last known secondary contact, and that website is not known for being inaccurate.

[Edited 2014-03-12 16:56:00]

Can anyone comment on the difficulty of creating a computer program to pick up anomalies from these satellite images? Would this be technology that larger governments have (USA, China, etc.) and could be used for something like this, or is this just sci-fi at the moment. I would think that these governments would already have programs to pick up possible troop movements, missile launchers, etc. . .or software that would flag possible objects for further human review.

Quoting phantomx18 (Reply 9): Can anyone comment on the difficulty of creating a computer program to pick up anomalies from these satellite images? Would this be technology that larger governments have (USA, China, etc.) and could be used for something like this, or is this just sci-fi at the moment. I would think that these governments would already have programs to pick up possible troop movements, missile launchers, etc. . .or software that would flag possible objects for further human review.

It is something a computer science student who has taken a class in scientific computing / image processing could do in less than 24 hours.

The sea is blue and there's a lot of it, filter it out. Look for any contrast. There are algorithms that quantify the amount of contrast in an image. Prioritize images for review that have the most contrast. You will get lots of clouds. You will still have to go through all images, but you can at least look at the interesting ones first.

It's trivial. When I worked for an aerospace company in R&D, we did GIS work and we were doing much more complex image processing on RadarSat images with people no more educated than BCS/BMath (although often guided by papers written by serious academics)

[Edited 2014-03-12 17:00:43]

Quoting phantomx18 (Reply 9): I would think that these governments would already have programs to pick up possible troop movements, missile launchers, etc.

Yes, but they may not have algorithms foe picking up floating wreckage.

Repost from previous thread as I'd appreciate any input.

While searching in Tomnod for anything that could help, I came across some images that intrigued me.
I have noticed several objects that don't look natural in a widespread area, e.g.:
http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/18550
http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/16740
http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/14473
http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/16378
http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/15011

However, the images are quite dark so I cannot say if those are boats/ships.
In the vicinity, you can clearly see two ships as a comparison:
http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/18176

Using kmot's technique to get the coordinates, the area is located around 7.57563N 103.232585E

Last known position of the plane was 6°55'15.0"N 103°34'43.0"E

IIRC, someone talked about a turn heading 330° after this position.
When you connect the two dots in Google earth, they are 45 NM apart, heading 332°.




Any thoughts?

Quoting nupogodi (Reply 8): Kinda puts the difficulty of SAR in the sea into perspective, doesn't it?

It sure does.

Quoting nupogodi (Reply 8): I think your China Sat location is wrong though - at least, it disagrees with the information and map on Avherald which puts it southeast of the last known secondary contact, and that website is not known for being inaccurate.

I'll look into that. It's Google's encoding, but I might have the coordinates wrong.

Could a JSTARS pick up surface debris on water? It seems one of those could cover a huge area and stay on station for a long time as it is refuelable.

Quoting suseJ772 (Reply 13): I'll look into that. It's Google's encoding, but I might have the coordinates wrong.

You were right. According to CNN the coordinates are "6.7, 105.63", and for some reason I had "8.6276892, 112.4058292" - I have fixed the map to reflect the right spot. Good spot and thank you.

"
The Malaysia bashing is getting really really old. They are frustrated they haven't found the plane, along with everyone else. They are not as media savvy as some of the western organizations are, but that does not make then incompetent.
"

- markalot

Thank you and well said. (sorry this is just before the previous thread was closed)

I am sure they are under a lot of pressure - domestically and internationally - and there are people who are trying their best to find the plane with the technology they have. Yes they have had some flubs and they could have done a better job of communicating and managing the message, but that is , hopefully, a lesson learnt on their part.

Hoping we can move to the next phase of the investigation to find out what actually happened to the poor souls onboard.

Until the aircraft is located and the Voice and Data Recorders are retrieved, everything is pure speculation. Even though their was wreckage that was found floating of the Air France A330 in the Atlantic Ocean within about five days, it took about two years to recover the recorders and determine what caused the aircraft's demise. Until that happens with this tragic accident, everything is pure speculation and heresy. Only then will we know what really happened and this tragedy can be put to rest and MAYBE some corrections can be made to help prevent a repeat of this accident.   

[Edited 2014-03-12 17:16:09]

To give an example of some things we were able to do by processing RadarSat images, we could image farmland and then accurately predict crop yield year-over-year. This is a service you can purchase.

Finding something floating in a sea of blue is literally trivial, from a computer science perspective. You still need humans to look through all the images in descending order of "interestingness".

But what could be so big and float? Parts of fuselage and wings that large wouldn't float, would they??

No, pieces of the aircraft the size of the componets of the Chinese satellite photo would not float. However, many pieces
of individual wreckage could gather together in the ocean currents into floating clumps. Also, I believe that the Chinese have MUCH
MUCH higher resolution photos and are not releasing the photos due to military secrecy reasons.

[Edited 2014-03-12 17:10:43]

Quoting stasisLAX (Reply 19): But what could be so big and float? Parts of fuselage and wings that large wouldn't float, would they??

In the AF447 the tail was floating. I think could be something of the same size.

[Edited 2014-03-12 17:14:56]



[Edited 2014-03-12 17:15:45]

A New Zealand oil rig worker claims to have seen a burning aircraft. He says he has tried to contact authorities but does not know if they received his email. Included is a copy.

“The general position of the observation was perpendicular/southwest of the normal flight paths.”



[Edited 2014-03-12 17:17:50]

Quoting stasisLAX (Reply 19): But what could be so big and float? Parts of fuselage and wings that large wouldn't float, would they??

It depends on whether it has taken on water. From a comment about eight threads ago, the AF447 tail had trapped air pockets so it stayed afloat. If the tanks are still sealed, fuel is less dense than water so would contribute to buoyancy.

Aircraft structure is relatively light. Huge ships made of steel float so part of an airplane is not a problem per se.

In the previous thread, the following image was posted:



He said it was not to scale, but the tail span of the 772 is 21.5m which is almost a perfect fit.

Remember that the dimensions are the minimal bounding box that would enclose the object. Therefore, a piece of the fuselage with the tail attached could be crazy big by those metrics, even though realistically most of that bounding box would be negative space.

I can't believe AWST ran an article with this headline

MH370 Could Be Worst Boeing 777 Accident

The loss of a Boeing 777-200ER operated by Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 could be the worst air accident involving the Boeing twin-aisle since the type entered service in 1995.


http://www.aviationweek.com/Article....e-xml/awx_03_08_2014_p0-670478.xml

No kidding! I hate it when people say the most self obvious things.

Quoting KIAS (Reply 22): A New Zealand oil rig worker claims to have seen a burning aircraft.

Respectfully, please read the thread first, at least the posts made on the date of your contribution. This has been posted. They deployed resources to the area and found nothing, last I heard, but hopefully will look further.

Quoting phantomx18 (Reply 9): Can anyone comment on the difficulty of creating a computer program to pick up anomalies from these satellite images?

It is easy to find changes on land thru software but nearly impossible to compare water bodies. Every single scan of the water surface will result in total different digital image, based on wind speed and direction the surface looks different, same with angle and intensity of sunlight. Human eye can correlate quickly to a previous image but computer program which is dependent on pixel comparison will be burdened by the amount of data change. It will process forever. Hope this helps.

Quoting nupogodi (Reply 25):

I've been reading since page 1, it's quite difficult to keep up with these threads. There is bound to be duplicate info. Thanks for the note.

Quoting DTW2HYD (Reply 26): It is easy to find changes on land thru software but nearly impossible to compare water bodies. Every single scan of the water surface will result in total different digital image, based on wind speed and direction the surface looks different, same with angle and intensity of sunlight. Human eye can correlate quickly to a previous image but computer program which is dependent on pixel comparison will be burdened by the amount of data change. It will process forever. Hope this helps.

This is nowhere near correct. I have literally worked on automated processing of satellite images. I'm only a private pilot, so I'm not the authority on airliners and their systems, but I do know this. Looking for "interesting things" in the sea is trivial and anyone could do it.

To greatly simplify the problem, think of a chroma key like a green screen used on movie sets. It's the same idea, just more complex.

You may naturally ask - well, why isn't this technology used to locate other crashes?

1) It is. Just that traditional SAR gets there first.

2) There's a lot of crap in the sea. Visible-range images are going to have lots of clouds. There's a lot of mess to go through.

It may simplify the effort by de-prioritizing images full of nothing, but while the algorithms are trivial, the process is not.

Quoting KIAS (Reply 22): A New Zealand oil rig worker claims to have seen a burning aircraft.

The problem with is is that his rig is too far away from where the Chinese object is.
His rig is some 350km north-east of the place where the Chinese object is and he claimed
that the plane he saw was more or less 40-50km due west from his potion.

So it does not match with the coordinates the Chinese are claiming their photos are from.

[Edited 2014-03-12 17:30:02]

Quoting nupogodi (Reply 28): This is nowhere near correct. I have literally worked on automated processing of satellite images. I'm only a private pilot, so I'm not the authority on airliners and their systems, but I do know this. Looking for "interesting things" in the sea is trivial and anyone could do it.

If it is that simple, DigitalGlobe/Tomnod wouldn't be crowd sourcing this effort. There are hundreds of companies and universities with image processing resources. Comparing land based images is totally different from comparing water bodies.

Quoting DTW2HYD (Reply 31): If it is that simple, DigitalGlobe/Tomnod wouldn't be crowd sourcing this effort. There are hundreds of companies and universities with image processing resources. Comparing land based images is totally different from comparing water bodies.

You don't understand the problem I am describing. We are not comparing two images against each other. This portion of the sea probably hasn't been imaged in the visible range in weeks if not months before this event. What we are talking about is finding *possible interesting anomalies* when we are *expecting* an open sea, e.g. we image it once and then prioritize the most interesting images for human review.

You are going to get clouds, and ships, and waves that hit the sun just right. But you're going to de-prioritize the 90% of images of nothing. That is the idea. This is what I am describing.

I couldn't tell you what Tomnod is doing. Hip startups are not known for their technical acumen, to be honest.

[Edited 2014-03-12 17:34:47]

Quoting stasisLAX (Reply 19): MUCH MUCH higher resolution photos and are not releasing the photos due to military secrecy reasons.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I doubt they'd release what they are really looking at. They make all the digital cameras now so its not like the infrastructure doesn't exist.

Quoting tarmacphotos (Reply 14): Could a JSTARS pick up surface debris on water? It seems one of those could cover a huge area and stay on station for a long time as it is refuelable.

Yes, it can be fine tuned as well. You're looking for a large chunk of metal but not one moving more than 1-2 knots. That rules out most ships. Even if they deployed now though its probably too late as the large bits might have sunk.

Quoting Starlionblue (Reply 6): hivue: How did France and Brazil do in the AF447 search? Answer: The political situation was a bit different. Far from territorial waters and those countries weren't regularly sniping at each other in ongoing territorial disputes.

And yet there were many who thought the search was being handled so badly that they suspected the French were trying not to find it in order to protect Airbus. There were complaints about a lack of transparency and that they were obviously hiding information. When comparing the search for MH370 to the search for AF447 there seems to be a certain amount of selective memory in evidence.

From the previous thread:

Quote: Quoting stuyyz (Reply 295): If the Malaysian authorities had just originally come out one day 1 and said something like, "we have recordings of an unidentified radar blip that crossed over Malaysia and disappeared in the Adaman Sea, we can't be sure it was MH370 because it was traveling slower and was smaller than expected, we're using our short range SAR to check there, and much of the rest of the SAR is in the Gulf where the last known position was".... almost all of the confusion and perceived incompetence wouldn't exist. Exactly! This is the kind of transparency we expect from modern investigations! It's only fair to keep the friends/family in the loop entirely, as well as the aviation community at large.

What makes you think Malaysian authorities had any idea on day 1 that they had a recording of an unidentified possible aircraft primary radar contact?

Standard procedure in cases of missing aircraft, and many types of aircraft incidents/ accidents - is to pull ALL the radar data 'tapes' (likely hard drive data today) - and put humans reviewing the data on the highest possible resolution.

That will mean that a lot of ground clutter, electrical blips, biologicals and other false returns will be shown. But good analysts with time can determine if there are any possible aircraft primary returns.

Four days to review all the data from a nation like Malaysia is about the right amount of time it takes.

Quoting nupogodi (Reply 1): Since then they have presumably been looking at every single image, possibly (and hopefully, for their sake) aided by software that detects anomalies. Still a lot of human effort to reject pictures of clouds and such.

Assuming the image released size is approx. 200 M square - that results in 25 images to each square KM. If the search area is approx. 200 km - 40,000 square km - so there are at least ONE MILLION images to be examined. Finding something this fast is an amazing bit of work.

Quoting RayChuang (Reply 4): What the searchers need is something that can take high-resolution wide angle pictures in a certain area over a long period of time. Maybe it's time to deploy the RQ-4 Global Hawk flying at 60,000 feet and use that UAV's high-resolution cameras to find the remains of this 777.

You still end up with several hundred thousand images which have to be reviewed. Even with the best software to eliminate 'blank' frames it is going to be several tens of thousands of images which have to be reviewed by humans.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to possibly take the email address of the sender and recipient out of the image a few posts above?

Quoting solarflyer22 (Reply 33): They make all the digital cameras now so its not like the infrastructure doesn't exist.

But the high end chips etc still come from US, Japan, Taiwan etc and your garden variety commercial chips don't hold up well out there in space!

Quoting KIAS (Reply 27): Quoting nupogodi (Reply 25): I've been reading since page 1, it's quite difficult to keep up with these threads. There is bound to be duplicate info. Thanks for the note.

I agree it is very hard. No worries. However for a specific item you can do a "ctrl-f" text search.

I added the location of the oil rig, last location of MH370, and even though the airport doesn't have much effect, the airport.

Since I know it's hard to read everything, if you missed the post above, the red-dots are an extrapolation of all the Tomnod map points (relatively small).

http://borgmann.me/a/mh370/

If you can think of any other points to add, let me know.

Quoting NWAROOSTER (Reply 17): heresy

I think you mean hearsay - there's no one blaspheming here!

The problem I have with the Chinese sat images is that they are showing three large chunks of whatever. Even if the aircraft made it relatively intact onto the water, there surely must be a lot of small debris, freight and equipment floating around and not just three large pieces of the aircraft.

Quoting David L (Reply 34): Quoting Starlionblue (Reply 6): hivue: How did France and Brazil do in the AF447 search? Answer: The political situation was a bit different. Far from territorial waters and those countries weren't regularly sniping at each other in ongoing territorial disputes. And yet there were many who thought the search was being handled so badly that they suspected the French were trying not to find it in order to protect Airbus. There were complaints about a lack of transparency and that they were obviously hiding information. When comparing the search for MH370 to the search for AF447 there seems to be a certain amount of selective memory in evidence.

Surely not! 

Quoting rfields5421 (Reply 35): What makes you think Malaysian authorities had any idea on day 1 that they had a recording of an unidentified possible aircraft primary radar contact? Standard procedure in cases of missing aircraft, and many types of aircraft incidents/ accidents - is to pull ALL the radar data 'tapes' (likely hard drive data today) - and put humans reviewing the data on the highest possible resolution. That will mean that a lot of ground clutter, electrical blips, biologicals and other false returns will be shown. But good analysts with time can determine if there are any possible aircraft primary returns. Four days to review all the data from a nation like Malaysia is about the right amount of time it takes.

Indeed. Even in this day and age of instant everything, very little is actually instant.

Quoting winstonlegthigh (Reply 36): Wouldn't it be a good idea to possibly take the email address of the sender and recipient out of the image a few posts above?

I had the same thought exactly! Then again I think that cat's out of the bag. His inbox is probably imploding right now.

This probably was posted a few times but I'll say it again for emphasis- the CNN iReport from someone using a satallite that spotted what appears to be a fuselage has no brevity or no actual definitive proof that it is MH370, so unless it is actually found by authorities, that is not MH370.

I know the search for this aircraft has been very poor and puts Malaysian authorities in an under qualified situation. But since this is a Boeing, is NTSB on this too ?

Quoting suseJ772 (Reply 39):

Thanks, this does add some useful perspective. That sat photo seems quite a stretch south of the flight path.

Quoting suseJ772 (Reply 39): If you can think of any other points to add, let me know.

Great work - thanks and keep it up.

What about overlaying the ocean currents? That might help too..

1011yyz

In case there is still skepticism, here is how I would personally coordinate a satellite-based search effort for floating debris:

1) While our satellites are orbiting and photographing the area, which takes some time, create a simple algorithm that can reliably filter out the sea and rank the overall level of contrast (simple with fourier transforms, divide image into blocks, sort of like how lossy compression works). Use it on "known-good" images like ships, "known-bad" images like open sea, and verify that the results are what we expect. Photoshop a piece of debris into one of the "known-bad" images, or use a picture of other debris if you have access to it, and ensure that the results are what you expect.

2) Run this algorithm on your data set. Assign people to manually review the images in descending order of our "importance metric", i.e. you will have lots of people looking at the most important ones, fewer looking at the next, etc etc. These teams will flag images they think hold something important for further review.

This way, all images will get reviewed, but more people will be looking at the more important ones, so you will go through them much faster. The ones flagged for further review should get more scrutiny. Certainly they will have moved so we don't get another imaging pass.

This way, you examine the entire area but you prioritize the parts that are important. If this process fails, you can obtain a new data set or alter the parameters of your algorithm to be more permissive.

It's really not rocket science; it's computer science. I have no doubt a similar process is how China was able to image such a large area but find large debris within 3 days. You can use computer vision algorithms to approximate the physical size of interesting objects, too, and include that in your "interestingness" metric but again you'll get noise like ships and clouds. If you estimate their size at least you can reject lots of clouds entirely.

Airliners are magic to some people, but not to you guys. Scientific computing is magic to some people, but not to others.

[Edited 2014-03-12 17:53:51]

Quoting winstonlegthigh (Reply 36): Wouldn't it be a good idea to possibly take the email address of the sender and recipient out of the image a few posts above?

And his passport number!

Quoting ThunderboltDrgn (Reply 30): The problem with is is that his rig is too far away from where the Chinese object is. His rig is some 350km north-east of the place where the Chinese object is and he claimed that the plane he saw was more or less 40-50km due west from his potion. So it does not match with the coordinates the Chinese are claiming their photos are from

I think it still is valid. Yes, it is 350km now. But it's been lost for 4 days. If ocean currents are .9 m/s (or 3.24km per hour) for 4 days would be 311 km. It's at least reasonable what he saw would have been the plane. I am not saying it isn't. But it COULD in theory be.