Hacker News Reader

Comment by goodcanadian | Hacker News Reader

Well, the ocean currents in the Indian Ocean seem broadly consistent with the idea that wreckage could have drifted from the presumed crash site to Reunion:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Indian_O...

View on HN

It only now occurs to me that somebody should have purchased thousands of rubber ducks[1], then traversed the 7th arc[2], tossing one* overboard every mile or so.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_Floatees

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_Malaysia_Airlines_...

* Appropriately labeled with GPS coordinates of release, of course.

Here's a pdf of a poster where someone did basically that, using computer simulations of course. Their figure 5 shows debris zones [edit: actually garbage patches] that are pretty close to Reunion

http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Charitha_Pattiaratchi/pu...

I'll update if I can find the other refs.

Update: To do this correctly, you'd need winds, and the approx windage of the object. Coast Guard search and rescue simulations take this into account. Wind can push objects on top of the ocean currents.

That's a good point about the windage. I'm skeptical that you can really conclude much about the original impact site from a single piece of debris anyway. On the other hand just being able to narrow the origin down to even one half of the arc might be beneficial at this point.

There are buoys that pretty much accomplish the same purpose... See post #38 here: http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/565335-flaperon-washes-up...

Or try it yourself...

http://adrift.org.au

Reply on news.ycombinator.com