Scientists are nearing a breakthrough in the decade-old mystery of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Researchers in Florida suggest that crucial answers might lie within barnacles that clung to fragments of the plane.
The shells' temperature records could help retrace barnacle movement, potentially pinpointing where the plane entered the water. Though MH370's fate remains unknown, the presence of plane debris in the Indian Ocean has led to widespread belief in its crash there.
A Malaysian official (C) takes pictures of a piece of suspected aircraft debris after it was found by fishermen on January 23, at a beach in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat on January 25, 2016.
Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370
In March 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared during its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members. Despite extensive search efforts spanning the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, the aircraft's vanishing act has propelled it into the annals of history as one of the most renowned aviation mysteries.
The flight's trajectory took it to a cruising altitude of 10,700 meters by 1:01 A.M., after which critical communication systems were turned off sequentially. By 2:22 A.M., Malaysian military radar lost contact as the plane altered course.
Signals from an Inmarsat satellite and analysis of these signals led to the conclusion that the aircraft likely crashed in a remote part of the Indian Ocean, 2,500 km southwest of Australia, making survival extremely unlikely.
Search attempts were challenged by the crash site's remote location. Acoustic pings potentially from the flight recorder were detected in April 2014, followed by submarine searches. However, no conclusive wreckage was found, and faulty equipment was identified as a potential cause for the pings, leaving the fate of MH370 still shrouded in uncertainty.
The initial debris, a wing flaperon, emerged on Réunion Island in July 2015, far from the designated search area. Subsequent findings of 27 more fragments across various shores suggested the plane's breakup, though whether it happened mid-air or upon ocean impact remained uncertain. The debris aided in refining the search region in the Indian Ocean, accounting for debris drifting patterns and possible crash scenarios.
Barnacles, Water Temperatures May Hold the Key of MH370's Location
The formal search for the aircraft, which was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, concluded in January 2017, and a subsequent six-month private search a year later yielded no results. However, researchers now posit that a solution to one of the ocean's most substantial enigmas may reside within the shells of barnacles.
University of South Florida researchers developed a technique to extract ocean temperature data from barnacle shells, reconstructing their drift path on debris to trace back to the crash origin.
By applying this to larger shells formed at the crash site, they hope to locate Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. Inspired by barnacle-covered debris on Reunion Island, Professor Gregory Herbert recognized barnacle shell geochemistry's potential for crash location clues.
Marine invertebrates like barnacles create internal layers in their shells akin to tree rings, each layer's chemistry reflecting the water temperature when it formed.
Professor Gregory Herbert and his team, having spent years refining a technique to extract ocean temperatures stored in shells, conducted a growth experiment on live barnacles. This yielded temperature records from barnacle shells for the first time, and they applied this approach to small barnacles found on MH370 debris.
Collaborating with barnacle experts and oceanographers from the National University of Ireland Galway, they combined the temperature data from the barnacles' shells with oceanographic models to achieve a partial reconstruction of drift paths. This groundbreaking study is published in the journal AGU Advances.
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