you want it to be found by rescuers or recovery team. it s designed to be unique and not readily found in nature. thomas, the ping detector that the chinese have on board is designed for use in shallow water, water as deep as 15,000 feet in these areas. is it possible to pick up a pulse that deep with this equipment? well so say it s designed to work in shallow water. that means the sensor only goes into shallow water. the ability for sound to propa investiga propagate and move through the water is very complex. there was a discussion about the water column and layers. that s very important how sound moves. so we would say that it is possible, but it s very unlikely. it would have to be the perfect set of conditions to have any frequency like 37.5 propagate
we usually get a plus five day variance on our batteries. we anticipated them lasting longer. as the battery degrades the signal will go down. the frequency will change a little bit and then the ping cadence will slow down from the normal one ping a second. it is consistent. having heard the actual pings and having our team analyze it, the noise is definitely consistent with what our ping is designed to do when it hits the water. thomas, how big of a development is this? how could it change the calculation for searchers right now? i think the information that s coming from the australian ship is pretty significant. it is the fact that you have this period of one second or approximately one second and you re in the frequent band that s close to where you re supposed to be. the pingers are designed to be 37.5 kilohertz and the faa
before any beacon is shipped from here its sound output is measured in one of these huge 50,000 gallon tanks. it s lowered into the tank through the floor above. surround by hydrophones, ultrasonic readings are recorded on this computer. this pinger is twa flight 800 which went off the coast of new york back in 1996. this company made the pinger. after it was recover they got it back. this one was found in shallow water but they are designed to function in water as deep as 20,000 feet. what about the frequency? crews at sea picked up a slightly lower frequency than the pinger s standard frequency of 37.5 kilohertz. water temperature can shift the frequency. it s so distinct, right? there s nothing else that would sound like this with this frequency. 37.5 kilohertz was selected because it is unique from the background noise in the ocean.
that we made before now it s two miles and they seem like just as cautiously optimistic. what am i missing? well, you know, i m with you. if you got the pings and the pings really were from the black boxeses and they have two different ones so it would be from the two black boxes and certainly they recorded the latitude and longitude of where they were when they got the pings and they had them for one of them for two hours, so to go back there, but they tell us, the oceanographers, tell us at even at a three-mile radius, the ocean is a big place, it s going to take a while to map the ocean floor. they wanted to zero that in. certainly they are the best that we ve had in the entire investigation. it s pretty good to us from those on the outside looking? then you heard these on 33.3 megahertz, david, not 37.5. that s still close enough. we feel like we re still pretty
that one location, which is the north side of a feature called the wallaby plateau. i think that s a great place to start in an underwater map. they should work outwards instead of worrying about how big that area can be. what do you make of the discrepancy and frequency? the numbers keep getting all scrambled up in my head. but it was 37.5 and it s 33.3 or something along tohose lines. the frequency it was supposed to be from the manufacturer, what they were picking up yesterday, not the same thing. does that trouble you or does that seem like something in the realm of possibility given the conditions down there? it did trouble me, but cnn analyst david soucie has convinced me that that s a normal drift as batteries wear down and time goes on. we could drift into those different frequencies. it s almost like riding down the road and with the old radios