it s sensing everything. so the fact that we got a ping tells you a good place to go with the ocean shield to start looking deeper. professor stupples, how is the listening technology on these buoys different than what the ship is using to pick up the pings? well, the towed ping locator is very much more sensitive than this bouoy. the buoy contains a hydrophone. that is not to say that it hasn t picked up a ping from the locator. and david, the big question now, investigators have said these signals have the potential of being from a manmade source. uh-huh. i think we agreed last night that it s hard to imagine what they could be other than the black boxes. but what could it be? well, the only thing that i looked i did research to try and find out. the only thing i found out was
it s day 32. we can assume that the batteries are at the very least dying if not altogether dead. they were meant to last 30 days. how much more time could possibly be left before they are gone altogether? well, we talked to the manufacturer at duquesne and they said it can go as far as 35 and does go as far as 35 days quite often. but i have some hesitation about that because i have information from an inside mechanic that did the malaysian inspections, the audits, and found that they weren t properly stored which could have a dramatic effect on the life of that battery. so i m a little bit hesitant to think that we re going to get anything more than what we ve seen already. professor stupples, one of the things being pointed out is we have two pings consistent with the voice recorder and the flight data recorder. but transmitting. are these devices similar and do they give off the same message? the locator beacon is identical. they actually put off the 37.5
down as a whole unit as opposed to little pieces since we haven t found debris anywhere in that search area. professor stupples, this is nearly three miles underwater. how reliable are the pings and how difficult are they to track back to their source at this tremendous depth? well, the ping ger locator tt is being used by ocean shield is very close to the ocean floor so it s quite likely that it is able to pick it up if the black box is there. the black box range is probably around 1500 to 2,000 meters, just about a mile to two miles. and the locator that is being put down there is only about a mile away from the possible source of this. so it s very likely, if it is there, it will be picked up. david soucie.
it were only going one mile an hour, at this amount of time, it could be 750, 800 miles an hour. that essentially separates this area from the event down below, wherever the plane is. so if you find what is down below, that doesn t necessarily connect you to something up above. if you find something up above, it may not connect to something below. could it still be the picker locators and you have nothing on the surface? sure. there may not be debris on the surface. but the converse is also true. if you find debris on the surface, that may not at this point tell you anything about where the debris is below the water. tom foreman, thank you so much. i want to bring in cnn safety analyst and author of the book why planes crash, david soucie and david stupples. you say the device that the australi australians were using to get these pings were far more advanced than those used by the chinese.