Look, I love the reporting and respect the integrity you are bringing to these questions about whether the discovered piece of plane could really be part of the missing flight. But at this point, I worry that you are being deliberately evasive. You have demonstrated better than anyone that the discovered flaperon is inconsistent with a crash that occurred in March 2014. But now is the time to move past the barnacles and directly address the questions your own research raises: was the flaperon planted? By whom? How? When? How much of this was part of an elaborate distraction? Or was it a last minute effort to redirect focus? Who was in on this ruse? The superb research of your post make these questions inescapable (and you have partly addressed them in your book.). But now you must help us understand the central issue: why would someone place fake and misleading evidence in the middle of this story?
I appreciate your feeling of impatience, but as you express here yourself, this is both a very complicated case and one in which there is both a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of misinformation. You're familiar enough with my work to know what answers I'd give to the questions you ask, and once all the details have been nailed down I do want to take one last run at the mystery that's both concise and comprehensive, maybe a documentary feature or a short series of episodes on YouTube. But before I do that I want to make sure that the evidence is as solid as I can plausibly get it.
Jeff - been reading about the Geelvinck Fracture Zone (idea) not theory recently as well which was personally new to me but likely not to all of you. I would be curious of your take. It would be great if oceangate is more transparent if they do go back if this is on their radar too.
Not to be pissy, but I would draw a distinction between an "idea," which is a thought that comes into someone's head for whatever reason, and a "theory," which is an idea that attempts to knit together all the evidence surrounding a phenomenon. An idea that doesn't have any evidence to support it is not really helpful or interesting.
That's fair. I use them interchangeably but without hard data, I will rename as "idea" which goes into the heap with all the others out there. Thank you for keeping this chat honest and calling out my mistake here.
Please don't think of it as a mistake -- you asked a fair question. There's a lot of low-quality information out there and there's no way for someone who isn't eyeballs deep in it to know the difference.
An important series of questions that the flaperon project might resolve, especially if you can mount small but sturdy cameras on the flaperon, and launch the flaperon on the crash day, would be (1) when and where do the leapas start to colonize - the seas near the 7th arc are brutal (2) how quickly do the early barnacles grow (3) can BIG barnacles stay attached for the whole trip (4) what are the influences of sunlight, water temperature, salinity and storms (5) if there are barnacle predators what do they attack (small versus large?) (6) as the flaperon moves west and the number and size of leapas increases is there enough food available to grow uniformly (small and large grow at the same steady rate, regardless of location and season)? (7) what happens to leapas as the flaperon moves into shallow water as it approaches an island? Or grounds on the island (8) as far as anyone can tell, only one flaperon made it across the ocean - should you launch more than one just in case? By the way, is there any inference from the absence of the other flaperon about where the
aircraft broke up (mid-air or at the surface) and how the wings (plural) struck the water? Has anyone analyzed what parts of the wings and tail would be most likely to float? Note that the inverse is also interesting - how big might the parts of wings, tail and fuselage be that sank more or less immediately? If there's only lots of small pieces on the ocean bottom can they be detected after all this time or were they detectable during the early searches?
You raise an interesting series of questions. Ultimately, I think that a lot of them will be answered by the Global Drifter part of the project, namely that when objects go into the ocean they reliably result in a population of Lepas whose size correlates with the total time of immersion, so questions of whether big barnacles die or variations due to salinity will be moot.
Amazing Jeff, keep investigating please.
Thank you Brett! And thanks for all your help.
Look, I love the reporting and respect the integrity you are bringing to these questions about whether the discovered piece of plane could really be part of the missing flight. But at this point, I worry that you are being deliberately evasive. You have demonstrated better than anyone that the discovered flaperon is inconsistent with a crash that occurred in March 2014. But now is the time to move past the barnacles and directly address the questions your own research raises: was the flaperon planted? By whom? How? When? How much of this was part of an elaborate distraction? Or was it a last minute effort to redirect focus? Who was in on this ruse? The superb research of your post make these questions inescapable (and you have partly addressed them in your book.). But now you must help us understand the central issue: why would someone place fake and misleading evidence in the middle of this story?
I appreciate your feeling of impatience, but as you express here yourself, this is both a very complicated case and one in which there is both a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of misinformation. You're familiar enough with my work to know what answers I'd give to the questions you ask, and once all the details have been nailed down I do want to take one last run at the mystery that's both concise and comprehensive, maybe a documentary feature or a short series of episodes on YouTube. But before I do that I want to make sure that the evidence is as solid as I can plausibly get it.
Jeff - been reading about the Geelvinck Fracture Zone (idea) not theory recently as well which was personally new to me but likely not to all of you. I would be curious of your take. It would be great if oceangate is more transparent if they do go back if this is on their radar too.
Not to be pissy, but I would draw a distinction between an "idea," which is a thought that comes into someone's head for whatever reason, and a "theory," which is an idea that attempts to knit together all the evidence surrounding a phenomenon. An idea that doesn't have any evidence to support it is not really helpful or interesting.
That's fair. I use them interchangeably but without hard data, I will rename as "idea" which goes into the heap with all the others out there. Thank you for keeping this chat honest and calling out my mistake here.
Please don't think of it as a mistake -- you asked a fair question. There's a lot of low-quality information out there and there's no way for someone who isn't eyeballs deep in it to know the difference.
Are there any updates around efforts to return to the area to search now with spring there and summer approaching?
That's a great question. I don't know but will ask
An important series of questions that the flaperon project might resolve, especially if you can mount small but sturdy cameras on the flaperon, and launch the flaperon on the crash day, would be (1) when and where do the leapas start to colonize - the seas near the 7th arc are brutal (2) how quickly do the early barnacles grow (3) can BIG barnacles stay attached for the whole trip (4) what are the influences of sunlight, water temperature, salinity and storms (5) if there are barnacle predators what do they attack (small versus large?) (6) as the flaperon moves west and the number and size of leapas increases is there enough food available to grow uniformly (small and large grow at the same steady rate, regardless of location and season)? (7) what happens to leapas as the flaperon moves into shallow water as it approaches an island? Or grounds on the island (8) as far as anyone can tell, only one flaperon made it across the ocean - should you launch more than one just in case? By the way, is there any inference from the absence of the other flaperon about where the
aircraft broke up (mid-air or at the surface) and how the wings (plural) struck the water? Has anyone analyzed what parts of the wings and tail would be most likely to float? Note that the inverse is also interesting - how big might the parts of wings, tail and fuselage be that sank more or less immediately? If there's only lots of small pieces on the ocean bottom can they be detected after all this time or were they detectable during the early searches?
You raise an interesting series of questions. Ultimately, I think that a lot of them will be answered by the Global Drifter part of the project, namely that when objects go into the ocean they reliably result in a population of Lepas whose size correlates with the total time of immersion, so questions of whether big barnacles die or variations due to salinity will be moot.