How Debris Can Point to Malaysian Plane's Point of Impact
Ocean search for missing jet depends on complex physics—and luck.
When the black boxes of Air France Flight 447 were finally located two years after the plane crashed in the Atlantic Ocean halfway between Rio de Janeiro and Paris, investigators found them in an area that was carefully searched early on and then abandoned.
"Multiple countries searched that area," says Richard Limeburner, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. "I'm not sure there was someone in charge at that point. They also had bad weather, with some windy conditions, so they couldn't see very far."
Limeburner and another oceanographer eventually found the wreckage, guided by satellite data collected from drift buoys fitted with sensors and used to track ocean currents.
Oceanographers in Australia hope the
