black boxes that they managed to locate this area without any wreckage discovered whatsoever? i guess the best analogy right now, since we are into march madness, this is the buzzer beater from half-court. this was a shot in the dark. they had some good idea of where they were at. it s not clear how ocean shield had been out there but this is an incredible great piece of luck. arnold, have you ever seen a situation where they have located the two black boxes before they spotted any wreckage? i never have. in fact, getting to black box pingers singing to you, presumably that s what they are doing, the pulse, is really strange. i m used to really hearing one pinger going off and then you try to zero in on the two. there s one thing that really has to be done immediately right now and i believe the navy and
of ocean one at a time and work their way through it. but it s going to be very slow and methodical work. and presumably, arnold, if it s getting closer and closer to the relatively tiny black boxes, the wreckage presumably is not all that far away, right? exactly. the black boxes are in the tail of the aircraft and should be right near to the wreckage. and so there is equipment that would see that wreckage at some point if they were investigating a relatively small area? yes. side scan sonar is really adept at really picking up wreckage and you can with side scan sonar see tail, if the tail is somewhat intact, wings and other parts of the plane. and you can, to a degree, discriminate even if the plane has been really broken up. it sounds, richard, like this is the best hope that we ve had over the past four-plus weeks. when the u.s. navy says they are cautiously optimistic, they are
either. detect it and find it and find a way to bring it up to the surface and then inspect it. brian, thanks very much. let s dig deeper. right now joining us, richard quest and also joining us here, van gurley, along with sonar technology expert arnold carr. let s say that these pings are coming from the so-called black boxes. so walk us through exactly. if the batteries are dead, how long could it take potentially to find them? the good news is, wolf, they ve got a much smaller area now. up until now we ve been talking about tens and hundreds and thousands of square miles. if they are in fact on the area, we re now talking about 100 square miles, maybe 200 square miles. it s a much more problem to search through that. if in fact the pinger batteries dies and they are not able to reacquire the signal, what they would do is go through the blue fin 21 and search small patches
phoenix are doing it. they must really triangulate that area before the batteries get too weak and disappear. that s critical right now to really tightening up the area. arnold carr, thank you so much, van gurley, thank you. richard quest, we ll see you in a while. up next, new clues about the flight path but mixed messages from the malaysian government. new details coming into the situation room. [ male announcer ] how can power consumption in china, impact wool exports from new zealand, textile production in spain, and the use of medical technology in the u.s.? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy. it s just one reason over 75% of our mutual funds beat their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment information, risks, fees and expenses to read and consider carefully before investing.