After Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, for the first year and a half, the only clue was a collection of electronic signals showing the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, in western Australia.
16 months later, in July 2015, the right flaperon of MH370 washed ashore on the French island of Reunion - physical evidence that the missing plane had actually flown into the southern sea.
According to New York Magazine, this MH370 debris carries evidence that could help pinpoint the plane's location and solve the biggest mystery in modern aviation history: a gooseneck program program ( part of a program) Lepas anatifera.
Like the rings of trees, the shells of humming bites have records of their lives. Decoding that information and following them on the MH370 side of the plane can help solve the mystery.
The MH370 and Lepas bypass on the debris has fueled a decade of research around the world. Since After tends to encroach on any floating object in the ocean, the oldest participants on the object will reflect the total time the object is in the ocean.
In the years after the discovery of MH370 debris, researchers have raised earthworms in laboratories and on buoys at sea. Scientists discovered that Lepas grow at different speeds and of different sizes depending on water temperature and food content.
The team that studies how After thrive in the cold waters of the Humboldt strait off the coast of Chile has found that after 3 months, After thrive stops growing when about 20mm in length. Another study in the warmer waters of southeastern Australia found that Lepas grew up to 48mm in just one month.
In 2020, Martin Stelfox - founder of the olive Ridley Project on Sea Turtle Conservation - and his colleagues announced the results of the After-Series experiment on buoys in the Maldives. After 105 days of growth, the largest shell of After is 35mm, close to the size of the largest star on the MH370 bypass.
The water area for raising Lepas goose is similar to the water area that the MH370 bypass passed to the Reunion: the equatorial Ocean - the ocean flowing from east to west extends the latitude between northern Australia and Madagascar.
The group's most recent study published in 2023 was led by researcher Nasser Al-Qattan, University of Kuwait, who analyzed the rock layer provided by French authorities.
The shell of this creature is relatively small, about 25mm, meaning it is only a few months old. The chemical composition of After shows that this creature grows in relatively warm water, about 27 degrees Celsius, then flows into cooler water, about 24 degrees Celsius.
Researchers concluded that the data showed that "the MH370 sidewing may have spent the last few months west of the 70th day of the equator and within 1,500km of the Reunion Island." This location is more than 1,600km from the search area for MH370.
In general, the samples shared by France are too young for the Al-Qattan team to follow the path of the bypass to return to the crash site.
It is known that French authorities have recovered larger par crabs from the MH370 bypass, with the largest model having a diameter of 36mm, but cannot share them with outside researchers.
Al-Qattan's team noted: "Only a part of the drift can be recreated until the largest and oldest trees are made public by the French government for research."
However, New York Magazine points out that many data show that the 36mm particles from MH370 debris given to scientists for research are not enough to repeat the location of the crash. And this mystery is just part of a series of paradoxes related to the disappearance of MH370.
