course. right, david, a piece that big almost 80 feet, can you make a guess as to what it might be? there s some speculation it would be a wing. that would be approximately that size. and mary had pointed out earlier today that if it s a wing as low as it was on fuel a large cavity of air inside that thing. and it is a sealed wing. unless it came apart during the impact. in which case i d be concerned because the size of the waves would tilt and rock and eventually fill that up with water fit was cracked and allowed water to get into it. right, bill walldock, you re a coast guard rescue guy for eight some years. i was harkening back to my remedial physics, archimedes principle. something is buoyed by the water it displaces. are you optimistic if it s floating this many days after a potential crash it will stay up or are you worried it might
back, reverse engineer the current activity, the wind activity, and try to put it back in time 14, 15 days to where the aircraft actually entered the water. from that point, the other thing that s going to be a major issue, things like the flight recorders. if they remain attached to the structure of the airplane, probably are going to be some distance away from where the aircraft entered the water because the aerodynamic forces on the airplane tend to move things, but so do the hydrodynamic forces once it s in the water. wing is designed to produce lift and air. you put it in water it tries to do the same thing. it s just a much thicker media. so with the current activity conceivable we could move a lot of the stuff a long distance away from the airplane that went into the water. fluttering around down there. david what are your thoughts? search area air france off the coast of brazil started at 5,000 square miles. this has to be factors of that,
airplane subsequently crashing after a known in-flight fire, it happens relatively quickly. because there s an awful lot of things if it s an electrical fire, for example, you can get arc temperatures and electrical short somewhere between 7,000 degrees fahrenheit and as much as 16,000 degrees fahrenheit. the electrical component of the fire acts as an ignition source for things around it. swiss air 111 being an example. my lar insulation in the overhead had literally caught on fire after being ignited by the electrical short. the crew wasn t aware of it and they were running the cockpit smoke checklist. in every single case where there s been a fire like that, the crew s been able to communicate with air traffic control to let them know what the situation was. in miami in 1996. the cargo compartment fire. the crew didn t know the fire was there until it burned through the floor of the passenger cabin.
miles away tomorrow. so the most inaccessible spot you can imagine on the face of the earth. if there is anything down there, we will find it. i want to bring in cnn s tom foreman, doing such a great job of virtually showing us the circumstance we are in and how it changes day to day. tom, we were just talking about an underwater crime scene if we ever get to that stage. and what it s going to be like for mariners to have to do this. where we re talking now is incredibly different than the underwater crime scene they mapped out for swiss air 111 off the coast of halifax for flight 800 off the coast of new york. we re in a no man s land. take me there and help me get a handle on whether we can even do this. one of the reasons it s no man s land, we still don t know where we re looking. we still don t know. we talk about the pinger running out on the flight data recorder. we have talked about that a lot. what s also running out here, day by day, all of the intelligence they have on
divide the two, 26 days. that s how long it s going to take to search that entire area. now, they do have additional aircraft there. they have one more plane in the air. they have other ships, commercial ships as well as military ships steaming to that area. so they will have more assets in the region. but if they don t pick up the pace, 26 days. that s how long it s going to take to clear all of that space. let us hope that fortune is on their side. we get word sooner than that. thaj thank you, kyung lah there in perth. let s turn to washington, d.c. now, bring in jim sciutto of cnn with more on the ships and planes searching. what is the american involvement now, jim? well, it s a big involvement. this is the search area again we ve been talking about. the u.s. has deployed its p 8 poseidon, most advanced surveillance aircraft. can see very far and travel very far and stay on station for a very long time to search for this. also got a p 3 orion taking part as well. you note u.s.