tests will teach them. the important thing about these tests is most of them other than the visual inspection or inspection with microscopes and electron micro scopes they help them determine the damage pattern that is not avail to believe the naked eye or the naked eye with a microscope. they will be able to tell perhaps, what part of this flaperon hit the water first. they will be able to see if there was a turning or twisting as it was coming down to hit the water. these tests are designed to tell the investigators things that the eyeball cannot. first and foremost it is confirming is it or is it not from mh 370, then part b of that would be all those things to figure out what may have happened to the plane. exactly. part of determining whether it
actually want to see the piece with their own eyes. they want to draw those conclusions when they see the evidence in person this piece of debris. no one wants it make a mistake here. there is no margin for error. they want to be a hundred percent certain on this. there is another aspect determining whether or not it came from mh370, but could this flaperon actually shed light, actually provide other clues about what may have happened on board the flight. we ve had different experts begin to weigh in. one from the independent group, the one that helped australia refine their search area. a gentleman by the name of michael exner, saying the damage pattern is clear. the damage is on the back half and not on the front. what he believes that means is that it somehow came off of the plane while it was still in flight. all of this important and matters because it could help
believe the plane is, they still found nothing. so if there was anything down there that they would have probably located something. i think what you re looking at here is by far and away an exceptional piece that survived whatever took place in the south indian ocean. there may be isolated other pieces. but from what i ve heard and what people have said to me, any idea that there is a large, floating mass moving across westwards seems to be inaccurate. miles, you agree? i do, wolf. you know, we ve been talking a lot about deliberate action over the past couple of days. and if it was a deliberate action, the idea was to make this plane vanish. we ve also been talking about two scenarios. either a sully-style ditching, ever so gently, or a rapid nosedive into the ocean. the separation, the apparent separation of this flaperon based on the damage pattern indicates to experts that this was a high-speed dive into the
and provide technical expertise to help us resolve and figure out what was the particular damage pattern on one of the windshield. but we are investigating it at this point. and we ve just asked them to come in and help us out on identifying that fracture pattern. tom costello is outside the 30th street station in philadelphia. tom, it does seem as if ntsb is trying to tap the brakes on this growing story that maybe some outside sbitd or force caused this accident. reporter: here s why they are concerned about this. they had a septa regional train hit by something. the engineer thought he had been shot ought. we had another train hit by something, a brick or something. and potentially in amtrak train 188 hit by something potentially on the windshield. nobody knows the answer to this right now because the engineer says he doesn t remember. but the question is is it possible that when that brick or whatever it was hit the front of am track 188 if that s in fact what happened that it
northeast corridor it s so common getting hit by projectiles, that he actually protect themselves with armor in the front window. listen to robert sum walt of the ntsb. we are investigating the accident and have asked the fbi to come in and provide technical expertise to help us resolve and figure out what was a particular damage pattern on one of the windshields. we re investigating it at this point and asked hem to help us identify that fracture pattern. whether or not this was the cause of the train going 106 miles. er hour, we just don t know but the federal railway administration has ordered amtrak to install atc, automatic train control. that would alert the engineer the train s going too fast. they also asked them to put signs up for curves and signs up for speed. alex. adam reiss in philadelphia, thank you much. fewer americans are identifying themselves as christians. what s behind this shift? but first the amtrak crash will