More than two years after the disappearance of MH370, and a month after the three countries directing the investigation said they may be giving up, one of the leading scientists who told investigators where to look is saying that searchers may have been hunting in the wrong area all along. Australian government scientist Neil Gordon headed up the team whose mathematical analysis of satellite signals transmitted by the plane defined the boundaries of the 120,000-sq-km seabed search zone. With the hunt for MH370 still empty-handed, he thinks the plane most likely came down further to the northeast.

"If you look at the probability distribution, it would say, 'Go up north,'" says Gordon, head of the Data and Information Fusion group at Australia's Defense Science Technology Group, in his first-ever press interview.

"What's the probability you think you'll find it in there? I'd have said, mid-70s, because that's the probability content of that zone."

Gordon's group was brought into the search mission in mid-2014 when Australia was given responsibility for finding the missing aircraft. Starting with the set of seven "pings" the plane sent to an Inmarsat satellite during its last six hours in the air, the group used a branch of mathematics called Bayesian analysis to assess all the possible routes the plane might have flown to see how well each path fit with the data. Their results showed the most likely resting place of the plane, which was along an arc defined by the seventh and final ping. The ATSB then performed a separate analysis to determine how far the plane might have flown from the seventh arc. The result was a probability "heat map" showing where on the surface of the ocean the plane might have impacted. The current search area is a rectangle than encompasses the highest-probability portion of the heat map.

Yet, even though his team helped to define that area, Gordon is not entirely surprised that searchers have not located the wreckage. We're talking about probabilities, after all, and probabilities based on a lot of unknowns. "If you'd said before they started searching this 120,000 square kilometers, 'What's the probability you think you'll find it in there?' I'd have said, 'mid-70s,' because that's the probability content of that zone." In other words, even if Gordon's math was spot-on, there's a 25 percent chance MH370 crashed in a place outside the search box.

For the plane to have traveled somewhere beyond the search zone, there are a couple possibilities. Either the airliner was held in a slow, gliding descent and hit the sea further to the southeast, or it followed a curving path further to the northeast.

The current MH370 search area.

[ The current MH370 search area. The dark green box is the 120,000 sq km search area defined by DSTG analysis. The light green area shows the portion of the seabed already scanned (an earlier portion of the search, guided by a slightly different analysis, searched further to the northeast). "Area 1" shows the area, stretching 100 nautical miles beyond the 7th arc, where MH370 could have ended up if the pilot held it in a glide after fuel exhaustion. "Area 2" shows the as-yet-unsearched area where Gordon suggests the plane might have gone. The two red arcs lie 15 nautical miles inside and outside the 7th arc, and define the region within which the plane most likely ended up if it was plummeting as quickly as the metadata for the final ping suggest.]

At one time, both were considered viable possibilities, but recently search officials took a more careful look at the data from the 7th ping and determined that it did not fit with the glide scenario. "The final electronic communication signaling points to very high descent rates," Gordon says. "If you look at the simulation results that Boeing has done for uncontrolled descent from that time, they're consistent with the numbers you get from the final data messages pointing to a very rapid descent rate."

Specifically, the metadata indicate the plane was descending at about 5,000 feet per minute (compared to 2,000-3,000 feet per minute for a typical airliner descent into landing) and then, eight seconds later, somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 feet per minute.

This is a high rate of descent, and it indicates that the dive was steepening. Therefore, it would have struck the surface of the ocean soon thereafter and at high speed. This scenario would be consistent with the small size of most of the pieces recovered so far, as well as the recent assessment by the ATSB that the plane's right flap was stowed inside the wing during impact with the sea. If the pilot were making a gentle ditching, you'd expect that flap to be deployed.

If this new interpretation of the data is correct, there is essentially a zero probability that the wreckage will turn up in the course of the current search, which is expected to stretch on until December. After that? It depends whether the investigating nations put enough stock in this idea to keep the hunt going.

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