been reading, the chinese picked up the pings first. michael kay, is this effectively the haystack we ve been looking for, or is that too optimistic? no, i think we ve completely bipassed the haystack. i think we re going straight in for the needle. i can t remember a time in history on any accident investigation where authorities and search operators actually found the needle before they found the haystack. just like to pick up the point you ve been raising. this is a critical time. the weakness of the signal will be deteriorating. so we re kind of now in very critical territory in terps of ocean shield now having to go and do those three long legs to try and triangate and fix where the ping is. that s key over the next two to three days. michael kay, thank you. christine, michael, thanks to all three of you. the big question for all of us today are the noises heard by
different area, about 300 miles away. officials cannot confirm anything that has been heard over the last 48 hours is connected to this plane. want to dig into what this latest information can actually mean for the search. i m joined now by expeditions logistics specialists christine dennison. cnn s michael kay. and thomas alshiler, telemanager of bp design systems which designs and builds the black box pingers and also the pinger detectors. perhaps you can tell me what the job is now. now that we ve had these two very promising detections, marchly from the ocean shield, because it seems to be the longest, the two-hour ping followed by the 15-minute ping that had the echo. what s the job now for the ocean shield? what are they trying to do? they re trying to do kind of cover the area and narrow where they thing the ping s coming from. they need to shrink the box they re going to look in when they put the vehicle down.
talking that they re hearing an echo or a ping and a ping. they re hearing a ping at one frequency and a ping at another frequency. which would be entirely different. which would say it s from two different devices compared to an echo or something bouncing off the bottom or something in the water. that s the other question i have for christine. what are the odds that double echo or double ping could have been as simple as a bounce off of a thermal layer or cavern or mountain or other debris? well, actually, we re working they re working in very deep water. approximately 12,000 feet. it s very dense water. sound travels faster in deeper water. that 350-mile radius between the chinese ship and the ocean shield, it s very possible they re both getting the same sound, and it could be closer farther south. it s just traveling at that distance. because according to what i ve