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[Ken Nielsen]

I guess the appearance of solid objects close up had me believing for a moment, but no:

Sheet metal with rivets that washed ashore in Western Australia is NOT wreckage from missing flight MH370, officials confirm

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2611137/Have-MH370-parts-washed-ashore-Western-Australia-examine-unidentified-material-links-missing-Malaysian-plane.html#ixzz2zkGMwbQc
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[Dan Swift]

"Sheet metal with rivets"...why does that sound familiar?   But seriously, sheet metal with rivets can float?  That could be an interesting development. 

[John Ousterhout]

"Washed ashore" doesn't necessarily mean "floats on water".  It can also mean "easily moved by currents".  It's the difference between flotsam and jetsam.
The giant chunks of coral seen on the reef at Niku didn't float there either.

[Tim Mellon]

Since aluminum is only ~ 90% as dense as water, presumably it should float.

Damned decimal points...

[John Ousterhout]

Better double check your figures.  Aluminum density is 2.7 gm/mL.  (2.7 times the density of water)

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

Rest assured, the Australian authorities are already damping expectations - it's not credibly believed to be part of the 777.

Sad, seems we still have no material clue - not one bobbing seat cushion found in all that surveillance...

Nope. Nuttin'. Nada. The Empty Set. It does seem so intuitive that something buoyant would pop up. Only underscores our tendency to underestimate the vastness of the oceans... I did hear that someone in the search or pundit communities has speculated about doing a total reset on the search, from A-Z...

Which is exactly what they did for Air France AF-447 Mark. That's when it got really complicated but, it got results.

"Our approach to the AF 447 search is rooted in classical Bayesian inference, which allows the organization of available data with associated uncertainties and computation of the PDF for target location given these data."

The full successful method is explained here...

https://www.informs.org/ORMS-Today/Public-Articles/August-Volume-38-Number-4/In-Search-of-Air-France-Flight-447

And contains some nice graphics and formulae

[Mark Appel]

Rest assured, the Australian authorities are already damping expectations - it's not credibly believed to be part of the 777.

Sad, seems we still have no material clue - not one bobbing seat cushion found in all that surveillance...

Nope. Nuttin'. Nada. The Empty Set. It does seem so intuitive that something buoyant would pop up. Only underscores our tendency to underestimate the vastness of the oceans... I did hear that someone in the search or pundit communities has speculated about doing a total reset on the search, from A-Z...

Which is exactly what they did for Air France AF-447 Mark. That's when it got really complicated but, it got results.

"Our approach to the AF 447 search is rooted in classical Bayesian inference, which allows the organization of available data with associated uncertainties and computation of the PDF for target location given these data."

The full successful method is explained here...

https://www.informs.org/ORMS-Today/Public-Articles/August-Volume-38-Number-4/In-Search-of-Air-France-Flight-447

And contains some nice graphics and formulae

Yikes. Thanks Jeff. You got the "complicated" right But I have a feeling that's where this search is headed--into a time-intensive grinder through the data.

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

Yes, it needs to be found Mark to find out the exact cause. Mischief or mechanical the industry needs to know in order to put measures into place that may prevent it happening again.

[Dan Swift]

Wow!  Didn't mean to 'start' something.  But very interesting info.  I was just hinting at a similarity to the Tighar artifact that also must have "washed up on shore" at some point. 

[Mark Appel]

Wow!  Didn't mean to 'start' something.  But very interesting info.  I was just hinting at a similarity to the Tighar artifact that also must have "washed up on shore" at some point.

Understood. Well I think it's fair to say there is a difference between the sort of debris that results from a recent event and floats as a matter of its buoyancy and that sort of debris that's heavier than water, sinks, and over time is deposited through sheer, mechanical force of wave and storm action.

[Jeff Victor Hayden]

The search for the missing Malaysian plane is entering a "new phase", Australia has announced, after the initial undersea search found nothing.

PM Tony Abbott said that "a much larger" area of the ocean floor would now be targeted.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27184295

The biggest drawback with having to expand the search area is that a lot of that area is out of the reach of the Bluefin-21.

[JNev]

If you think Earhart got lost...

[Ric Gillespie]

The biggest drawback with having to expand the search area is that a lot of that area is out of the reach of the Bluefin-21.

That's actually a plus.  Maybe they'll now switch to technology that works.

[JNev]

And with no apologies to those who can't stand FoxNoise - a new location may be coming...

[John Klier]

More on the new claim.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-370-georesonance-wreckage-of-a-commercial-airliner-found/

Interesting data shown in those graphics. If it were true it would mean the aircraft sunk pretty much intact.