the hubble telescope can see 10 to 15 billion light years into the universe but a three miles under the sea that is a true twilight zone. i want to bring in our expert panel david gallow who is the hole institute and a sound expert is here and michael kay, former royal air force. david, perhaps i can start with you. why such a mystery under the ocean? is it the conditions, the money, the technology? sure. it requires technology. it s vast. it s covering 70% of the earth surface and its deep average depth about two and a half miles. the pressure there is incredible. you can crush the titanic like a paper cup in your hand and it requires specialized technology to get down there and begin to explore. michael, one question that comes to mind here is why aren t they showing you have this one blue-fin 21 but others exist in the world and it moves at a walking pace and you re mowing the lawn in effect three miles
mediterranean sea. it is a surreal underwater scene with mountain ranges, some mountain ranges more than 600 feet tall, or 60 stories on a building. the oceans are really no different than what we see as humans on land, there are valleys and ranges. they use the sonar for under water, like this area, searches are not always successful, particularly when you re dealing with the mountainous plateaus that are in the indian ocean where it is believed that flight 370 now rests. if they re able to ascertain for sure that the wreckage is nearby and the bottom of the indian ocean is flat do you think they will be able to find the plane? yes, there s a very high probability they would be able to find the plane in those conditions. but that is a big if, because most of the underwater area being searched has never, ever been explored. gary tuckman, cnn, san diego. and joining us once again is david gallow, and david soucie.
looking for wreckage. but that really moves at a walking pace and is a tedious situation. you really have to go down and get whatever it is they could see. this could take weeks even if they are in the right spot. anderson. yeah, michael holmes, i appreciate the update. the new pings and all they imply about locating the wreckage, a call to what comes next when a debris field is actually located. now, in a moment we ll show you just how truly deep the ocean is and the challenges conducting the recovery operations. first, i want to focus on the latest news about the pings and the scramble to hear more. joining us again, cnn analyst david soucie, arthur of why planes crash, and david gallow, director of special projects of the woods institution. also, richard quest, richard, just big picture, in terms of the optimism that we heard from that last press conference from
and they want to make this point just because they think they heard this sound from one of their pingers down toings it doesn t mean that the plane or pinger is right there. it radiates so widely. it could be far, far away. so they will have to narrow down the search area these search teams to try to fine it. i appreciate the demonstration. i want to bring back david gallow. and former department department of transportation inspector. you believe these pings are from black boxes. is there too much evidence for it to be anything else? absolutely. without a question in my mind they are. especially since we ve gotten it from source we have. the china didn t seem very credible to me because of the equipment they were using and highly possible they were doing some testing on the pinger. i didn t give that a lot of credibility.
david, you had a general idea where the plane went down. you found debris, the pingers on the black boxes never worked. still took you months and months of searching over two years to find the wreckage, correct? took two years with all the mobilization and things like that to get back out there but all together on the water about ten weeks. actually two months of that, eight weeks was spent almost on a wild goose chase because of a bad model for retrodrifting. so drifting debris backwards took us to a bad place. you know, it s definitely doable. the team out there, phoenix international are superb at locating black box. so that s interesting, david. you re saying really on the time on the actual water was ten weeks to actually find the wreckage from the time you found the debris, not including all the bureaucratic time spent getting approvals, getting permission and the like. took a year to get out there