Amelia Earhart's long-lost plane possibly detected by sonar 16,000 feet underwater, exploration team claims

Rapidcreek@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 472 points –
Amelia Earhart's long-lost plane possibly detected by sonar 16,000 feet underwater, exploration team claims
cbsnews.com
113

That's deeper than the Titanic! 12,500 vs 16,000 feet.

Can we send Jeffrey Bezos or Elon Musk down in a submarine to confirm the find?

Probably need 3 to man the sub. May as well send both and everyone agrees on the third. Dont even need to name him.

Both Koch bros. get to fight over the xbox controller on live stream.

Good news, one died quite awhile ago. There's a comedy show called Upload made by the office creator that parodies his death to hilarious effect with some supporting characters.

I always forget if it was Charles or David who died, but honestly who fucking cares. They're just knockoff Palpatine A and B to me.

Yeah, that was my attempt at funny: one mummy, one corpse, fighting over the controller while the other fuckos watch and they all dive deeper into the crushing depths. 🤗🥰

Thought we couldn't dump raw sewage in the ocean

That is not a problem for the wealthy, they know what is best because they are so smart. They have the be brilliant because they have that much money.

In a sub designed specifically for them by their own employees, knowing that Bezos and Musk will be the only individuals to ever stress test the vessel? I'm sure that would go swimmingly. 😁

Controlled by a Nintendo switch controller with stick drift

Fingers crossed it's made of carbon fiber.

Second hand, "vintage" carbon fiber.

Everyone knows old CF has that resonate frequency that just sounds better than modern digital CF designs.

I was holding out hope for the Delta quadrant.

Funny I just watched that episode not too long ago. I always liked it when Trek did weird little historical episodes like that.

1 more...

Who was the best 'person from the 20th century frozen and come back to life on a Federation starship,' Amelia Earhart, Khan or that country singer dude from the TOS episode where they also unfroze the asshole businessman that found out he was in a post-scarcity society?

I'd say the country singer dude. He was pretty chill.

It does raise a ton of questions, though. If 24th-century medical science can easily revive a person who'd been frozen with primitive 20th-century cryonics, why did they ever "give up" on people dying of things in sickbay? Stick them in the freezer and ship them to a better facility on a starbase. Having emergency freezers in shuttles or escape pods would also make sense.

That's nothing. It's established that the transporter can keep you alive indefinitely in the pattern buffer, make an exact copy of you and turn you back into a child.

Not enough people recognize the transporter is an immortality engine. Thank you for being this important point to light. It would actually solve the Lower Decks question if how do the officers come back to life instead of the black mountain and screaming koala.

Only the bridge crew gets immortality.

This is almost canon thanks to Lower Decks where Lt. Shaxs died heroically in one episode and then a few episodes later was back at his post, with one lower-ranking crewman explaining it to the other with a simple "he's bridge crew" and a shrug.

Scotty jury-rigged it that way with him and another guy, and the other guy didn't make it. Dr M'Benga also did it for his daughter, and he had to refresh the system periodically and make sure nothing else messed with it while she was in there.

It can work, but it's unreliable and/or has heavy maintenance requirements.

It was also being used in the flashback episode where M'Benga and Chapel were medics on the front lines of the Klingon war, they were using an evacuation transporter to store critically wounded soldiers who couldn't be patched up with the equipment they had on hand. Led to a difficult moral dilemma where they needed to clear the buffer to accept more incoming wounded in need of treatment.

The more routine it gets in the show, the harder it is to explain its absence.

The transporter is a death machine. They established that in the episode with the two Rikers created by some interaction between the transporter and the field around the planet, leaving one stranded. Normally it kills you and creates a duplicate. You're actually dead while your doppelganger takes your place.

Goddammit. Seriously?! That is extra fucked up.

Thanks a lot. Now I'm scared of transporters. Only shuttles for me from now on.

I always thought of the Culture as the Federation, but super-hardcore. In the Culture, individuals can just upload their mind to a new, undamaged body if they're sufficiently injured that repair isn't an option. Even just popping the head off is enough to revive someone if they don't have a backup and can catch it in time. If the repairs will take a while, they can drop into a simulated reality to do something else while they wait. Some individuals get tired of living and decide to just end it -- no backup. Others get tired of living and have themselves warehoused until something interesting happens somewhere down the line.

But if they made Trek like that, I don't think 80's television audiences could have handled it. I'm not certain 21st century TV audiences are ready for that.

Don't know about TOS, but TNG did country singer, asshole businessman, and woman. It was still the wacky seasons so it had that feel.

Whoops. Meant TNG.

Every time I re-watch that episode all I wanna do is hang out with the country dude. Like, imagine a farmer from the 1820s who's somehow still alive and all they wanna do is play guitar and sing folk songs. I'd be that person's best damn friend.

I don't even like country music much and I still would want to hang out with the guy. He just seemed like a cool guy to get to know. And the fact that he took waking up hundreds of years after he was born in stride just made him cooler. Imagine finding out you died, got frozen and ended up in the 24th century and were just like, "well, that'll happen..."

The two guys signed up for it. The woman's husband signed her up so she had no idea. Wake up and it's suddenly 400 years later? Yeah I'd be wtf too.

The costumes from that episode were straight out of the TOS leftovers closet, though. Probably the script, too.

There was Kahn and company on TOS, the '37s on Voyager, and geetarist, businessman with boneitis and random sad housewife on TNG.

1 more...

I watched a documentary on Amelia recently and her sister was like (paraphrasing) “Amelia would have been so mad they’ve wasted this much money looking for her body, pilots died all the time back then.”

One thing I’d forgotten was that she had another person with her during that last flight—her navigator

That poor Fred Noonan is the most forgotten man in history

I bet I could beat that.

I literally had no idea you even existed until you posted. So you have some tough competition. I don't believe in you!

The fact that you know his name tells me he's not.

I'm copying my comment from the other thread:

I listened to an interview with the owner of the company on the radio this morning. He's a commercial real estate investor who sold everything near the start of the pandemic (smart). He then decided to form an ocean exploration company to search for things like lost planes and ships and such. He chose this as his very first search because he was curious, but also because he wanted to generate publicity for his company. They set up a 90-day search mission and were filming it for a documentary. And they found the object on literally the very last day of the search. They say it could be the plane, but that it could also just be a group of rocks in the shape of a plane. He's already gotten one [person? company?] to hire him to look for another lost item underwater and had other inquiries.

Honestly? I don't think it's the plane, just a guy drumming up publicity for his new business, especially since it's in a field that he's not established in. They're going to go back and either not be able to find that image again, or it'll turn out to be a bunch of rocks. Possibly even a bunch of rocks they spotted earlier and came back to in the last day with the idea of "eh, close enough" for publicity purposes. As for the image? Remember this?

One of the reasons my ex hated me is because I was skeptical about everything.

But in today's modern age, everyone's a grifter and I have yet to see video or photos of something clearly a ghost or ET.

Amelia Earharts wreck has been sought for so long, and has had many false positives. Since there is the smallest wiff of a grift here, I think we can safely say, yeah I'll believe when it's recovered.

My ex hated that about me too. She absolutely despised it. When we got together I thought she was like that too, but she was mirroring my attitudes about things.

By the end she was saying “law of attraction” and reading tarot cards.

it could also just be a group of rocks in the shape of a plane

This whole search was as useless as those plane shaped rocks. Wait a minute.. There's a plane behind those rocks!

Ah yes, the Face On Mars

And just below it, the Dugong of Mars. Proof of sentient dugongs on the red planet

They’ve “found” her plane several times. I remember 5 years ago it was found near Papua New Guinea. Before that, people found a fragment and bones on an atoll. Before that, people claimed she was pictured with Noonan in some Japanese photos.

Definitely looks like AN airplane, whether or not it's THE airplane, I guess we'll find out in a few years.

Hope they send a drone down first.

Nah let's send another billionaire.

Elon Musk, if you happen to read this, I believe you're the only one that can go down there. You're so brave and amazing, nobody else could handle such pressures.

I'd bet you could even go down there alone and do excellent work. We all believe in you. Go. Seriously, do it.

Agreed! What we find down there could save humanity, and, honestly, no one else is really brave enough or smart enough to do it.

We need to send at least two. You can't just trust the words of one billionaire. We should probably send at least 3 just to be on the safe side.

Gotta pack them in as tight as you can to provide structural integrity in case of implosion.

Always send a drone first, D-class second, MTF third, and lastly a second MTF to rescue the first MTF.

This MTF specializes in being rescued by a subsequent, cooler MTF lol

That sonar image is very compelling, but I'm no expert in such things and claims about Earhart's plane, or at least wreckage from it, being discovered have been made before.

It's clear that it's a plane, and I'm sure they've compared the size of the sonar image to the size of an Electra. To say that it could be Earhart's plane must mean that the size of the sonar image doesn't exclude that plane.

Then the question becomes "Which other plane could it be, for the size and shape, and for where it is?" Now, obviously it's a wreck, and it's been at the bottom of the ocean for a long time, but based on that sonar, it looks pretty intact. That suggests that whatever plane it is was ditched in the ocean relatively intact, as opposed to suffering a catastrophic impact. Just based on the sonar, though, those wings look to be swept back more than an Electra's are.

Electra is a bit over 38 feet long. A MiG-15 is 36 feet long, and an F-86 Sabre is 37 feet. Both seem to match that wing sweep more accurately, though I have no idea if either of those aircraft were ever lost in the area of Howland Island.

If it's true that the bones found on Gardner Island "are almost certainly" from Earhart and/or Noonan, I find it highly unlikely that they could have landed at Gardner, and then the plane be swept all the way from there to Howland, while remaining so intact the whole way.

No, I don't think this is Earhart's Electra.

If it’s true that the bones found on Gardner Island “are almost certainly” from Earhart and/or Noonan, I find it highly unlikely that they could have landed at Gardner, and then the plane be swept all the way from there to Howland, while remaining so intact the whole way.

Keep in mind that the scientists who claim the bones are hers simply performed updated forensic osteology methods against the bone measurements and body measurements extrapolated from physical records and photographs. They said:

The bones are consistent with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably infer. Her height is entirely consistent with the bones. The skull measurements are at least suggestive of female. But most convincing is the similarity of the bone lengths to the reconstructed lengths of Earhart’s bones. Likelihood ratios of 84–154 would not qualify as a positive identification by the criteria of modern forensic practice, where likelihood ratios are often millions or more. They do qualify as what is often called the preponderance of the evidence, that is, it is more likely than not the Nikumaroro bones were (or are, if they still exist) those of Amelia Earhart. If the bones do not belong to Amelia Earhart, then they are from someone very similar to her. And, as we have seen, a random individual has a very low probability of possessing that degree of similarity.

This is certainly a good estimate, and the methodology tracks, but a) the actual bones cannot be measured/studied further, b) it's possible the bones were from a female of her same size, c) no other corroborating evidence is possible. They did a DNA analysis of some bones they found in the Tarawa archives in 2019(ish) which they thought might be the long lost bones, but tests concluded that they were not. So in this case I think it's safe to say these bones have a high probability of being hers, but not to extrapolate that because those bones were hers, other theories must be ruled out. It's suggestive that the bones were hers, but not proof that any other hypothesis should be confirmed or rejected.

Didn't they find parts from an Electra in the surf on the edge of a South Pacific atoll several years ago, with no other Electra ever reported lost in the area, and signs of decades old brief human habitation on the island?

Tony Romeo, a pilot and former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, told the Wall Street Journal that he funded the $11 million search by selling off his commercial real estate properties.

Well, it's as good a time to sell off commercial real estate as any. I can't help but wonder if the search actually cost as much as his investment cash-out, or if this is just a smokescreen to cash out without getting in the news for cashing out.

I doubt very much that this was a smokescreen. These types of search expeditions are fabulously expensive, it's a little surprising that it only cost $11 million tbh. That's partly why we're still not searching for MH370 (I think? Idk, too lazy to check); world governments have already spent an ass-ton of money searching for the wreckage without many good clues bring a realistic search zone into focus.

Do people generally need a smoke screen when they sell their (assumedly) legitimate investments for profit..?

How would funding a very public search be used as a method for staying out of the news?

I think the implication is the appearance of doing it for a good reason, rather than the timing implying that they want to pull out right now to get theirs at the expense of anyone still left in.

The stock market doesn't create money from nothing, it's people with good timing taking money from people with bad timing. When someone cashes out, it slightly hurts all other holders and the company itself. The bigger the cash out, the more it hits the rest. A big enough cash out can also trigger more people to do the same.

Basically, getting rich on the stock market, just like almost every other way of getting rich, comes at the expense of other people. It's just a bit easier to handle since you'll likely never meet or even hear about the people you hurt. So it's easier for people to stomache, or pretend it isn't their problem.

The stock market doesn’t create money from nothing

The derivatives market is valued around 1,000,000,000,000,000 USD, around ten times the world's GDP. Where'd that come from then?

Where indeed would that money come from.

If someone were to try to pull that money out, it would certainly have to come from somewhere. And my bet is it'll be the same as the rest of the stock market, it'll come a little bit from each other person that didn't pull out yet.

If anything it just sounds like that is a bubble that pretty much has to burst at some point and really fuck over the vast majority of people participating if it literally can't possibly be realized. I would stay away from anything that has bloated to a theoretical value that is beyond possible.

4876.8 Meters or 4.8km

!4.9km!< !Sorry :/!<

You are right!

I mean, only kinda, it's just closer to round, but ultimately it's about convention and practical use (eg with human age we round down, or even if eg someone was running "a 4.9k" and stopped some 20m before the finish line).

It's def not a mistake, either of the figures. But I do like when people point such things to me (genuinely, it's engagement).

2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...

That's only about 25% deeper than the Titanic.
I can't wait for more billionaires to fuck around with the ocean and find out.

They should convert a Boeing fuselage to a submarine.

Might be a good sector for Boeing to go into. Clearly the whole concept of up isn't working out for them, maybe the other direction would be better.

If they start shipping billionaires deep under the sea I'll invest & hold like GameStop!

A new journey on the oceangate brochure

could there still be signs of bodies after all this time? like bones?

Unlikely after this long. Sea creatures and the sea water itself will eventually consume and break down nearly every part of a body, including bones.

One thing that might still survive is leather clothing. Many leather items such as shoes have been found at the Titanic wreck site.

The video literally says they found bones that are "most certainly hers"

No, it said, "Gillespie's organization, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, has also claimed that it found forensic evidence, including bones on the island, that were likely Earhart's." That's an entirely different group than Deep Sea Vision, who conducted the deep sea exploration that's highlighted by the article.

And the study that made the claim back in 2018 said the bones, "have more similarity to Earhart than to 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample." That was based on documented measurements of the bones, rather than the bones themselves, which have long since been lost. "Most certainly", in this case, should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

I don't know why you bothered writing all that. The dude asked if there would be bones left, and the video says bones might be hers.

Which means yes it's possible for bones to potentially still be there. Doesn't matter if it's her bones or who says so, you missed the point.

You missed again that the bones aren't in the plane. Those bones were found in a place where bones could still be after this amount of time, not in the water.

They wrote "all that" because it included details important to read rather than skip over.

No mention of water or planes in the comment thread I replied to. We don't know she died at the bottom of the ocean in a plane. There could be bones, as stated in the video.

Ok, at least that explains what you are saying. The comment however was made on an article about potentially finding the plane, leading to the unneeded explanation that they are indeed referencing the plane when asking if there could still be bodies... not just in general.

It is quite literally impossible for bones to survive 87 years at the bottom of the ocean. The commenter said:

could there still be signs of bodies after all this time? like bones?

The answer is an unequivocal "no." Even the ones from Nikumaroro which were referenced in the video which you quoted, disappeared decades ago. There could absolutely, positively not be bones at this site, because bones at the bottom of the ocean are completely broken down within a few years. I responded with detail because you were clearly mistaken.

Can they just fine the plan so bad sci-fi writers can stop doing "Akshaully she was transported to the future and had sex with Jack Harkness and then she met Janeway!111"

Sorry "Over-the-top Sci-Fi answer for mundane mystery" is just... cringe bro