questions the world is asking. have we finally found a trace of flight 370. a pinger locator on that ship, the ocean shield, picked up signals over the weekend that are being called the most promising lead so far. and ever since they ve been searching and re-searching the area, trying to pick up those pings gone. if they do, they ll launch a blue fin 21, an underwater vehicle with more accurate sonar that might also carry a camera for mapping the ocean floor. but officials warn the process could take days. and as the search goes on, there are still more questions than answers. and you have been tweeting us your questions by the thousands. and we ve got top aviation and security experts standing by to answer them for you. like this. it s a very timely question. it s from rick. he says, let s say they find the black boxes. what s next? who gets to analyze them first? let s get right to cnn reporters in the region. matthew chance is in perth, joe johns is in perth.
can t confirm that this is where the aircraft is. because we haven t been able to hold the transmissions constantly. so there s still a little bit of doubt there. but i am a lot more optimistic than i was one week ago. [ inaudible question ] well, i think there are several days, probably several days more where we will tow the pinger locator around to try to get another transmission. this is day 32. the battery life expires on the device at 30 days. but experience with the kit from around the world is that they usually last longer than the 30 days. so we might proceed for several days more, and then if we don t
concentrate on doing this properly. reporter: a potential hurdle for the pinger locator? false positives. a manmade source, this could pick it up, especially if it s closer to the surface. what kind of surface? a ship, engine noise, transducers, anything that scientists put at the bottom. reporter: one thing that doesn t concern the manager, the idea of whales or other sea life sending confusing signals. they are good at weeding out possible false positives. and in op centers like this one onboard, they are highly trained to be disciplined and discriminate to block out any other potential sounds. that means teams of sonar techs working 12-hour shifts, mustering every ounce of concentration that they have, hoping for that one moment. they are sitting around for days listening to silence. the first ping, everybody would perk up and then if it s a
we are looking for wreckage and there s still a long way to go. and i think without wreckage, we can t confirm that this is where the aircraft is. because we haven t been able to hold the transmissions constantly. so there s still a little bit of doubt there. but i am a lot more optimistic than i was one week ago. [ inaudible question ] well, i think there are several days, probably several days more where we will tow the pinger locator around to try to get another transmission. this is day 32. the battery life expires on the device at 30 days. but experience with the kit from around the world is that they usually last longer than the 30
say, to try to locate those areas and then throughout this search there s been a number of assumptions that have been made, hypothesis that has been made. it would at least give us a starting point to then work backwards but over the period of the last 30 days, we re still talking about a large potential area that it could be. at the moement. we have a cyclone that went through. it s a large task that is still ahead of us. how big of an area underwater let s say these two boxes are at the bottom of the indian ocean right now and you did get those pings over the past few days for two hours and 15 minutes. usually for that towed pinger locator to work, it s got to be one or two miles away. are you basically within a five or ten-mile radius of where you