Saturday, April 5, 2014

MH370 is Not Lost in the Indian Ocean


MH370 is Not Lost in the Indian Ocean

Inmarsat has pulled off the hoax of the century by directing the search for MH 370 to the Indian Ocean.

The probability of finding the plane in the present search area is no higher than for any other randomly selected area in the Indian Ocean.  

Inmarsat is guilty of some combination of scientific incompetence and fraud.  The original interpretation of the purported measurement of distance between the satellite and plane based on time shift of the pings may have been an honest misinterpretation of the data and failed to recognize the plausible conclusion that the measurement was not sufficiently precise to accurately determine the distance.  This was the basis for the conclusion that that plane would be found in the Indian Ocean west of Australia and initiated a massive search and rescue operation.  Subsequently, the Doppler data clearly showed that the original conclusion was wrong, but instead of admitting their error and telling the world that they had absolutely no credible information about the location of the airplane they produced a flight path consistent with the Doppler data pointing toward the same general area in the Indian Ocean.  The search continued.  Inmarast failed to note that the proposed flight path was only one of at least 14 equally probable paths pointing in totally different directions.  This is fraudulent.

This fraud has unfortunately shifted the focus from the information that is available from the Doppler measurements.  The position and direction of the plane at the last radar detection provides a starting point for predicting the probable end position of the airplane.  We know that the plane flew for 7 hours and the Doppler data provides information on the direction of the airplane at the time of each ping.  To the extent that the speed of the plane is known, the position and direction of the plane at the time of each ping is determined.   This allows the flight path of the plane to be plotted and the end point determined.  The accuracy is limited only by the uncertainty in the speed and the accuracy of the Doppler measurements.  It is true that the Doppler shift depends only on the magnitude of the angle between the airplane velocity vector and the vector pointing at the satellite, and does not depend on the sign of the angle.  Thus, at each measurement two complementary directions are possible, and Inmarsat picked the one that led to their desired conclusion rather than others that were equally probable. 

I have neither the Doppler data nor a good estimate of the expected speed of the airplane, but any competent person with that data can determine the endpoint of the flight with an accuracy only limited by the uncertainties in the speed and Doppler frequency shifts.  This calculation will clearly show the areas where the plane is most likely to be found. 

The mysterious disappearance of MH370

The Malaysian government has now officially declared that flight MH 370 has crashed in the Indian Ocean.  The people on the plan are dead, and the plane is located at an unknown place and the chances that the plane will ever be found are remote.  End of story.

“The plane automatically sent a brief signal — a "ping" — every hour to a satellite belonging to Inmarsat, a British company, even after other communication systems shut down. The pings indicated that the jet kept flying for seven hours after its last radar contact.

Inmarsat was able to calculate two long arcs indicating where the plane might have flown.”

“But how did they do that calculation and what was the precision???

But perhaps it is only the beginning of the real story.  It is a tragic testimonial to the scientific ignorance of the media, government officials, and the public at large. If an “expert” states that something is true and no other “expert” disputes the statement, then it is accepted as established fact.  Early in this tragedy an expert stated that analysis of the data on the hourly pings between the aircraft and a stationary satellite showed that the plane travelled in a circular arc either to the north or the south as depicted in Figure 1.  The northern route was quickly discounted on the grounds that an airplane travelling on that path would have been detected by radar of the numerous air defense systems along that path.  The southern path was accepted as truth and a massive, and so far fruitless, effort was launched to find the wreckage of the plane.  This conclusion ignored the possibility that the purported distance measurement between the plane and the satellite lacked sufficient precision to provide any believable information about the flight path of the airplane.  What was really observed was that the plane travelled for 7 hours with no detectable variation in the distance between the airplane and the satellite. 


Figure 1.  Flight paths on circles about satellite according to Inmarsat.

I am a physicist with expertise in time-of-flight mass spectrometry and have no expertise in either control of aircraft or aircraft communication.  I have made a good living for more than fifty years applying logical analyses to empirical observations and have learned many times that the seemingly obvious answer is not always correct.  I am surprised that no one has challenged the original conclusion that MH370 followed either a northern arc or a southern arc and could not have continued on its last observed westerly direction.  No one has pointed out the obvious fact that the routes supposedly followed arcs that were exactly equidistant from the satellite.  This could have been correct, but there is another more likely explanation.  The alternative is that the signal used to determine the distance from the satellite did not, in fact, correlate with the distance from the satellite, because the resolution of the measurement was inadequate.  If so, the data from the pings confirms that the flight remained in the air for 7 hours but nothing about the direction of travel. We routinely measure distances and times with a precision of 1 part per million.  This employs sophisticated instruments and software designed for this application.  The apparatus used for determining the path of the airplane was not designed for that purpose and the precision and accuracy expected for the measurement has not been stated.  If the plane had instead followed the trajectory such as illustrated by the red arrow pointing west, determining the apparent distance to the satellite would have required a precision of about 1 part per thousand to distinguish the straight trajectory from the circular one. (See Figure 2)  No data have been provided about the expected accuracy and precision of this purported measurement.


Figure 2.  Maximum change in the distance to the satellite for the straight path vs. the circular path.


The data from the Doppler affect measurements clearly show that the flight did not follow the circular route initially determined.   If the flight had followed the circular route, there would be no Doppler shift because the airplane velocity is then perpendicular to the direction of signal propagation.  The Doppler measurements may give an accurate determination of the flight path, but these data cannot distinguish between equivalent paths north or south of the satellite.  If the plane did not follow the circular route, then the reasons for discarding the northern direction disappear.  Inmarsat did not admit that without the Doppler data there was no evidence about the direction that the plane had flown and that there was no reason to believe that the plane would be found anywhere in the southern Indian Ocean. 

Rather than admit their error, Inmarsat attempted to interpret the Doppler data to indicate that the plane was in the south Indian Ocean even though that flight path had no basis in fact and represented only one of 14 flight paths consistent with the Doppler data.


Illustration of 6 of the 14 flight paths consistent with the Doppler data.  At each ping the angle between the flight path and the vector to the satellite is the same magnitude for either of 2 directions. The distances between the pings should be equal to distance travelled in 1 hour.  The positions shown here may not be accurate and are only for illustrating the principle.

Ignoring the speculations and faulty analyses, the established facts related to the disappearance of fight MH30 are the following:

1.       A competent person or person switched off the airplanes’ communication systems and directed the plane in a westerly direction.

2.       There is no credible data on the flight path following its last observation by radar.  The southern route generally accepted is not supported by the Doppler data.

3.       According to the interpretation by Inmarsat of the Doppler data the plane would have flown west until near the tip of India and then executed a sharp turn to the south.

4.       The Doppler data is consistent with the proposed route by Inmarsat, but it is equally consistent with the plane continuing on west and passing within ca. 2000 km of the satellite.  In the absence of any data indicating such a turn to nowhere, the latter seems most plausible.

5.       The plane flew for seven hours along one of the possible paths.  If it continued west, then it would have arrived at somewhere in Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Oman, or if diverted to the north in Iran or Pakistan.



 
 
 

 


In the absence of other credible data it seems reasonable that the plane continued in a westerly direction and would have arrived at the coast of Africa in about 7 hours.  It would have arrived there at about 3 am local time and may not have been observed, and whether it landed at an airport or crashed somewhere is impossible to know with the data available. It has been established that the plane was directed to a new flight path by a competent person on the plane who was also able to turn off the normal airplane communication systems. If that person or persons had a definite destination in mind, then it would be logical to continue on the original course until that destination was reached.  It might also be reasonable that people on the ground at the destination were prepared to assist in landing and concealing the plane and in dealing with the people on board.

Continuing to search in the south Indian Ocean is unlikely to yield other than negative results, even if the plane were there.  On the other hand if the plane is on the ground in one of the countries above, then an exhaustive search may provide some answers.  In particular:

If the plan did reach the coast of Africa at about 3 am local time on March 8, the US and other countries may have satellite surveillance images that would indicate a plane arriving at a lighted airport or crashing somewhere in that area.  These data must be examined in detail.

If the plane did in fact land and has been concealed, then it may take a concerted international effort to find it, but such an effort makes more sense than continuing to pick up trash in the Indian Ocean.

Starting from the position and direction observed in the last Radar sighting of the plane, and given the Doppler data and a good estimate of the expected speed of the airplane, any competent person with that data can determine the position of the plane at each ping and the endpoint of the flight with an accuracy only limited by the uncertainties in the speed and Doppler frequency shifts. This is true for all 14 of the possible paths.  About half of these will indicate end positions in the Indian Ocean and many of the others to the north can be rejected on the same grounds as the original rejection of the northern path.   This calculation will clearly show that there are at most 2 or 3 areas where the plane is likely to be found. 

Without hard information it is fruitless to speculate further about who is responsible and why it happened.  Those questions will be answered if and when the plane is found.  Also the fate of the 239 people on board will remain a mystery.  After nearly a month has passed It is hard to be optimistic about the eventual outcome, but in the absence of definite information to the contrary it is possible that some or all of the people on board MH370 are still alive.

Notes for the Future

This should never be allowed to happen again.  If both the transit time of the signal from the plane to the satellite and the frequency shift of the signal were accurate, and the speed of the plane accurately estimated, then the position and direction at the time of the “ping” could be accurately determined for all possible flight paths.  Further, if the signal were detected by two satellites separated by a known distance, the results would be more accurate since the speed could then be directly determined and this would remove all ambiguity about possible flight paths.  This allows the flight path to be accurately monitored in real time and the future position determined unless the plane changes direction between “pings”. 

Marvin Vestal

CEO SimulTOF Systems


 

 

 

 

 

3 comments:

  1. I may be incorrect here but does your argument in part assume perfect symmetry from a radiating object out in space and moving elements below. I'd heard there was a slight bias in the system which made it possible to identify aircraft taking a northern heading as opposed to those on a southern trajectory.

    If so, it should be possible to capitalize on any such bias in the system and test by developing a model of live flights and then running new flights against it.

    Since past and new data is easily available to Inmarsat, they did just that, and, it would appear, the results gave them very high confidence in the southern route. I'd read somewhere that the model correlation was well beyond any doubt.

    Thoughts?

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  2. I suspect the Inmarsat data was manipulated. Based on my particular theory:

    http://www.mh370yat.blogspot.com

    a clean up operation would have been executed following the shoot down. The team would have wanted to direct attention away from Diego Garcia but would also be very mindful of getting the cover story water tight. There could be no mistakes, and that needed time. So they probably started with the original data set and made the minimum mods needed to be consistent with flight to the chosen destination, so that some data/analysis could be released quickly without raising too much suspicion. Meanwhile, they may have been using the extra time to go over and over the data before public release. I would be surprised if it is not eventually released. It seems to be the linchpin in the cover story and needs credibility to marginalise sceptics.

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