many, many, many days because it s very slow, very painstaking work to scour the ocean floor, so and of course, the depths are are very deep. and it s very challenging. [ inaudible question ] yeah. the advice from the manufacturer is that 33 kilohertz 33.2 kilohertz is quite credible. the air france locator battery, from five years ago, was 34 kilohertz, so what happens, there s a change with the pressure on the ocean floor. and the age of the particular
that underwater autonomous vehicle, it would be a very, very, very long time before they could verify or find any sort of wreckage. christine? tell us about the difference in the signal strengths. is that casting any doubt on their findings? reporter: well, the signal that they detected is a total of 33.2 kilohertz, and they re expected to detect a signal of 37.5. houston addressing that at the press conference earlier today, saying that that doesn t necessarily diminish these results, given the conditions out on these vast, deep ocean waters, some 2.8 miles deep. sound can do funny things. and given the fact that the battery life is set to expire, all factors that could affect the signal. so, there s still hope, and they re saying this is at the moment their most promising lead. christine? erin for us in perth, thank you. as for malaysia airlines, officials not talking about what they think happened on board the
signals. as i said no luck so far. this is really critical to this search effort. they are trying to narrow down this potential search field, and they need a third signal, they say, in order to be able to do that. row mary? erin, what are we to make of the fact that the signal detected by the u.s. pinger locater you not the standard beacon frequency and what are authorities saying about that? that s right. the frequency detected was 33.2 expected as 37.5 kilohertz. angus houston was asked about that in the press conference earlier. he responded by saying the manufacturer says the findings are consistent with what we would expect from a black box pinger given the fact they are deep waters, 2.8 miles deep, as well as the fact that temperature could be a factor. the battery life also a factor.
to obtain from the two earlier acoustic events, well, that search area s too broad. if they had deployed an underwater vehicle right now to try and find this wreckage, well, the search would take many, many, many days. john? it s still too big. they do need to narrow it down. erin, tell me about the difference between signal strength that they detected when they were hearing pings. what does that indicate? reporter: that s right, john, we saw some video of that detection released today, that 33.2 kilohertz is the strength of the signal they detected on board the ocean shield. the signal should have been 37.5 kilohertz, but the manufacturer of the black box pinger saying that it s entirely possible that the signal strength could have been weakened, given any number of variables in an ocean with depths of 2.8 miles that they re looking at, things like
and of course, depths are very deep and it s very challenging. [ inaudible question ] the advice from the manufacturer is that 33 kilohertz is or 33.2 kilohertz is quite credible. the air france locator battery from five years ago was 34 kilohertz. so, what happens, there s a change, with the pressure, on the ocean floor, and the age of the particular batteries, the capacities can change and you get changes in the transmission level.