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Amelia Earhart Mystery Solved? 120

Posted by michael from the how-I-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-like-coconuts dept.
Un1v4c writes: "According to this article on MSN... "A Delaware-based archaeological group is sufficiently intrigued to send a diving team to an atoll 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii to get an up-close look at whatever produced the rust-colored spots on the space photographs taken by Space Imaging of Thornton. "Nothing out there occurs naturally that's rust colored," said Rick Gallespie of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery. He believes the rusty object just beyond the reef that surrounds the uninhabited atoll could be an engine and the landing gear of Earhart's Lockheed 10-E Special Electra."" See also this article on space.com and the picture in question. Apparently Earhart never had a piece of outhouse wash up on shore to help her escape.
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Amelia Earhart Mystery Solved? More

Amelia Earhart Mystery Solved?

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  • Re:News Flash! (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13, 2001 @07:42PM (#86081)
    located in the Pacific ocean 457.6 square miles east of Hawaii

    They also found a pink spot 37 volts south of Alaska.
  • Well, there was that episode of The Next Generation where Picard told Riker that he was trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem in his spare time.

    The theorem was proved a few years later in 1993 by Andrew Wiles.

    -----

  • Rambo? (Score:1)

    by drsoran ( 979 )
    Was this guy like Rambo or something? "It's not over! It's never over!" ;-)
  • Or they were captured by a Japanese scout party! Noonan was killed and the female was taken back to their Ferrengi prison camp on Saipan to act as a love slave. Err.. I mean the Japanese prison camp on Saipan.
  • A woman driver and a man who won't/can't get directions . . . and folks are surprised they were never seen again?


    :)


    hawk, wondering where he'll sleep (oh, wait--his wife won't use a computer, so she'll never see this :)

  • The Earhart Project Website [tighar.org] has more information.

    You can find more information about the planned expedition to the island here [tighar.org].

  • Before you criticize these guys, have a look at their hypothesis [tighar.org], and keep in mind they wrote this several months before taking the photo. I read the MSNBC article and initially thought it was hogwash too, until I visited the TIGHAR Earhart Project website [tighar.org].

    These guys aren't basing this off of two pixels on a photo shot from space -- they've got pretty good reasons to believe that this is where she ended up. They've really done a bit of research on this; it looks as if they've been working at this since the early sixties, and they've been sending expeditions to the island since the early ninties.

    See also some of their research [tighar.org]. bulletins. Sure, they might be wrong, but based the last of the transmissions heard from her plane and such, this is a *very* likely place for her to have ended up.

  • Atlantis
    A discovery like that will answer so many things in history. I will just love to see it found before I die
  • Pago Pago (pronounced like "pongo pongo") is the capital and principal city of American Samoa.

    It's also the place where Robert Louis Stevenson breathed his last (and he's buried there; I've seen a photo of him when he lived on the island, and he was one sickly puppy dog).

    The history lesson was thrown in for free.

  • How about the Next Generation episode (The Royale?) where Picard hinted [appstate.edu] that Fermat's Last Theorem had remained unsolved up to that time?
  • Checking on the research that the group has done... the remnants of the shoe were classified as a women's shoe, among other reasons due to peculiarities of stitching. This classification was made by the manufacturer of the shoe, as this particular sole still had the mfg's imprint on it. The shoes Amelia Earhart wore were in fact women's shoes, but they were typically functional and of styles similar to men's shoes.

    Here's [tighar.org] the link to that page of research. Note that they don't claim it's her shoe, but give evidence from the finds and from photographs taken as she left on her voyage.

    I have to say, overall I'm pretty impressed with this group. They seem to have pretty level heads, and as far as I can tell are doing an admirable job of scientific investigation.

  • I think they just mean naturally in that local area. I've seen miles of rust colored soil in Texas and Asia, but since it's an atoll, any sand would be white, since it's dead coral.
  • These guys are hard-core Earhart mystery fanatics.
    This is just the latest of nearly annual claims.
    Its not like- "Oh I see a rust spot on a random
    sat photo- must be Emila". They looked hard for
    the slightest possibility in a well-researched area.
    Hope better luck this round.

  • OTOH you will also have all sorts of atmospheric disturbances. Even if we assume that there are no clouds or particles in the way, different air temperatures will cause refraction in the atmosphere at boundaries of air with different temperatures, ie. the same effect as when you look at something through the air above a fire--the light path gets diverted. The effect is ofcourse much smaller in the atmosphere than above a fire, but it's a long way down, and many small errors add up...

  • stu42j typed: I'm sorry but michael's "outhouse" reference totally went over my head. Could someonce explain it please?

    Apparently somebody just finished watching CastAway [amazon.com]. I won't ruin the ending for you since you've apparently never seen it, but the comment is humorous.

  • News Flash! (Score:4)

    by PRickard ( 16563 ) <[pr] [at] [ms-bc.com]> on Friday July 13, 2001 @06:30PM (#86096) Homepage
    Today, BSNBC news reports that National Ocean Images Inc. has taken photographs of a mysterious black spot located in the Pacific ocean 457.6 square miles east of Hawaii. According to scientists (OK, one obsessed guy from Kansas), the spot is actually where Atlantis was swallowed by the sea some three thousand years ago. Or maybe the Titanic, or possibly the missing Mars Lander... Nonetheless, The US government and scientists from We Got a Grant and Have Nothing to Do National Laboratory will send a diving team to the spot this fall in hopes of determining what mysterious and historical artifact is not lying at the site.

    </SARCASM>
  • I'd be very suprised if this was what they hope it is. A couple of things to remember

    - This is essentially treasure hunting, the success rate of these things is extremly low.

    - The success rate of this group is low, they've already sent out five expeditions with theories of success, to return with nothing.

    - The evidence in this case is light. Wonder why you don't see the spots on the picture? They are a pixel or two large. Not to mention, almost the same color as the ocean. See for yourself here [tighar.org], they claim the "anamoly" is the sunken plane.

    I suspect this is a case of, we paid the money for this, now lets see if we can find something. If you look hard enough, you can see almost anything anywhere (heck, I finally saw 3D holograms in noise :). That all said, it's exciting to see folks chasing this stuff down, and the adventure getting there is almost as good as actually finding anything.

    I wish them luck, but hope no one is holding their breath on this one.

  • Did a little digging on Google and found this link:

    http://www.earhart.org/

    Interesting reading, as it claims a big coverup and the direct involvement of James Forrestal, then Secretary of the Navy.
    Since it's on the internet, it *must* be true...
    ;-)



    MMDC Mobile Media [mmdc.net]
  • Not to mention that it could be a boat wreck or the engine from an abandoned fishing boat.
    One of the main pieces of supporting evidence that she was there is from the discovery of the heel of a woman's shoe. Dig around on the web and see if you an find a picture of her in anything but man-style shoes and boots. Even as a child, she wore pants, rather than dresses, which was quite unusual for the time.

    MMDC Mobile Media [mmdc.net]
  • Well, at the time, Earhart's trip was hugely publicized as a good-will mission of peace around the world -
    What if the government was forced to admit that a national heroine was, in fact, a spy? It would have been a real black eye for America.
    Tensions between the US and Japan were mounting and Japan felt that they were divinely empowered to win any war they entered. This was around the time that Japan was devestating Manchuria and Nanking - their Navy was very strong and Saipan and the Northern Marianas islands were a key position for them, as well as a threatening one to America. (It's funny, none of my American friends knew that Saipan is a US posession now.)

    I live a few blocks from the Japanese War Museum and Shrine - (Yasukuni Jinja. I'll be up there tonight, in fact, for a summer festival.)
    There's always elderly Japanese soldiers up there, often looking at items from some island where they were stationed. I wonder if any of them were Saipan at the time and would be able to offer any information, but it would be just too insensitive for a foreigner to ask about such a thing. Plus, if they were sworn to secrecy then, I am sure they would still respect that.
    Maybe in a few years, as they die off, a diary or some photographs will surface and the mystery will be solved.

    Cheers,
    Jim in Tokyo



    MMDC Mobile Media [mmdc.net]

  • Not Saipan? (Score:4)

    by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <jim&mmdc,net> on Friday July 13, 2001 @08:23PM (#86101) Homepage
    I visited Saipan a year ago and there's a lot of local legend about Amelia Earhart. From what people have peiced together, AE's plane supposedly was shot down over/near Saipan by the Japanese forces on the island. Saipan natives recalled the Japanese's surprise that it was a woman aviator and especially that her navigator, a man, took orders from her. They were apparently imprisoned as spies, which they would have been, if they were in that area.
    One old chamorro woman recalled seeing a tall white woman with an injured arm ocassionally walking under guard of Japanese navy men.
    Later, American soldiers told of destroying a Lockheed plane that was in a Japanese hangar, after the fall of Saipan.
    If you go there, you can see the foundations of the prison where she was supposedly kept, as well as some really cool caves and bunkers hidden all over the island. Saipan is also one of the places where the Japanese soldiers were hiding and didn't know that the war was over - The last of them came down from the hills in 1953 or so.

    Cheers,
    Jim in Tokyo

    MMDC Mobile Media [mmdc.net]
  • Considering the anecdote about the site was from 1940-41, and it refered to a rusty object, the odds are strongly against it being a WWII relic. EArhart disappeared in 1937, so the few extra years might be a enough for an airplane to rusty beyond recognition, especially if it was caught in the surf as they suggest.

    Anm
  • From the MSNBC story, is why the copmpany charges $18 per sq km for imaging N America $35 per sq km for imaging anywhere else. It's not as if the satellite has travelling expenses or anything.
  • from the how-I-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-like-coconut s dept.

    Apparently Earhart never had a piece of outhouse wash up on shore to help her escape.

    Ooh, jaded allusions to two seperate movies in this post. I'm impressed - Michael, keep up your good work.

    Cheers,
    levine
  • ...and let's not forget that during World War II there was a lot of steel being flung around the Pacific. It now should be natural for there to be a lot of rusty spots.
  • "I'm pretty concerned about this. If the government finds out the exact number of hairs on my head, well, I don't know what I'd do!"
    Don't tear your hair out about it.
  • But can you dance to it?
  • I thought the Bermuda Triangle was built by the ancient Egyptians.

  • A ghost of aviation

    She was swallowed by the sky

    Or by the sea

    Like me

    She had a dream to fly

    --joni mitchell, amelia, from hejira

  • Many conspiracy theorists say that Amelia Earhart was shot down and/or captured by the Japanese because she would have seen their military activity in the pacific.

    Maybe they sunk it there.
  • I think that sexy model marrying the doctor was a bit bogus. I mean, come on, even though it's TV-PG how are they supposed to uh.. do a little "peer to peer file exchanging" if ya know what I mean...

    ----------
  • Researchers have actually been looking at this atoll for quite some time as a possible crash site for her. A couple of unidentified skeletons were found on the atoll as were various pieces of her actual wreckage. So they know she wrecked somewhere within the area (a very large area because of currents, but at least it was narrowed down). They don't know if the skeletons are her and/or her partner, but they might be and the wreckage is, iirc, definitely hers. These also aren't just random sat photos, they actually commissioned these photos to be taken of this specific spot.
  • was it me or was that movie dumb?
  • > I think it would be really interesting to figure out what exactly goes on in the Bermuda triangle.

    "Elvis needs boats!"

    - Mojo Nixon [mojonixon.com], "Elvis is Everywhere".

  • According to Dilbert, she was found, and put in a museum with her plane, where you can watch her behind glass, and every so often press the "Hurricaine" button.

  • Just identifing color from orbit is no big deal, even through water. Remember that the water in that part of the world often has clear visibility in excess of 100 feet. From a boat on the surface, you can clearly see bottom features.

    Anybody want to try proving that they *can't* see my face from space?

    Several years ago, Sky and Telescope (I think) did an article on the theoretical maximum resolution of satellite imagery. This was in response to the rumor of Big Bird satellites being able to read someone's watch from orbit. While I don't remember the details, they did the math based on the physics involved and what was considered the state of the art in optics. Their conclusion was that the spy sat might be able to see there was a watch as a single pixel color change, but reading it was beyond the theoretical limits given the known maximum size of a scope.

    But if you're really worried about them seeing your face from orbit, wear a hat...

  • This looks like the formula from the S&T article. Thanks for clarifying it.
  • Her luggage actually made it on the next flight. It's still waiting in the baggage area of LAX.

    Interested in weather forecasting?
  • I think it would be really interesting to figure out what exactly goes on in the Bermuda triangle. More ships and planes have been lost there than anywhere else, (to my limited knowledge), and the stories surrounding that area are facinating.

    Atlantis would rule, though.

    Interested in weather forecasting?
  • "Gilligan's Island"

  • Oh, great. (Score:3)

    by Kreeblah ( 95092 ) on Friday July 13, 2001 @05:59PM (#86121)
    This invalidates yet another Voyager plot [startrek.com] . . .
  • I think, what was meant, was that there is nothing "in that area" that anyone knows of, that makes that color.
  • Two pixels? These guys are having flashbacks. But to the 60s not the 30s.
  • Atlantis in the Pacific. Well no wonder it's been lost so long - we've been looking in the wrong ocean! Damn sneaky Atlanteans confusing everyone....

    I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be the Titanic though, since it'd have to have suddenly risen from the spot on at the bottom of the Atlantic where we've known it is for years (it was crossing from the UK to the Eastern Seaboard of the US remember) and flown across North America without anyone noticing.

    The post kinda reminds me of a story a software engineering lecturer once told me - he was working on an imaging system for a brain-scanner, and decided to test it on himself. When he got out of the scanner the doctors were all looking very serious and showed him a scan with a black blob in the center of his brain. After reeling from the shock he decided to go back and look at his code; it turned out that in a moment of distraction he'd started counting array elements from 1 instead of 0 - after fixing it his scan was blob-free. Anyway, this could be what your dark spot in the Pacific is.




    PS - yes, I do know you were joking

  • Having looked at the photograph I can honestly say that, given the chance, I would be going my best to raise funds to go there for a vacation... oh, I mean field expedition :-)
  • Sounds like some researcher has discovered a way to bilk a free vacation out of his employer.
    --
  • But the Star Trek timeline and our timeline splits off in the 1960s. So in Star Trek she did go to the other side of the Galaxy. Just like Star Trek had the Eugenic Wars in the 90s and sleeper ships, we had other little wars and space shuttles.
  • The group TIGHAR [tighar.org], which is in charge of this expedition, has had success with retrieving lost or buried planes of historical significance in the past. Though they may never find anything on Nikamuoro the reason they've chosen to focus on this island in particular is because: a) Like many rational people, their studies of history prove that most of the conspiracy stories are bunkum.

    b) Anecdotal historical evidence from natives continually points out to a plane like hers crashing near the island that was visible in a lagoon for awhile, and around the time of her disappearance.

    c) The recovery in a previous expedition of artifacts such as a shoe and labels from food cans produced around the time of her disappearance.

    d) A British research ship which a few years later took the bones of a "European woman" from the island, and the logbook and anecdotal evidence of such.

    e) In terms of Navigation, and her position near her disappearance, Nikamuoro is a lot more probably than Saipan.

    This group would not be raising $400k just for naught - they are trying to be thorough and rational... Perhaps this sometimes is clouded by the evangelical zeal they have by which they want to find the wrecked plane... Because at the very least it would finish off the ridiculous stories that transform her into some martyr. Let's not forget that Earhart was a devoted pacifist who worked as a nurse while in her teens on WWI soldiers returned home, and she was doubly progressive in teaching and looking after non white children at around the same time. TIGHAR may not find anything, but at least their search respects Earhart as opposed to using her for silly theories about how she was a spy for the US government. Let's not forget that it became inscribed in stone that her navigator Noonan was a tempestuous alcoholic due to one volume of biography that never attributed the knowledge of such - and subsequent research in later years was never able to find the man as incomptent at his job.

  • And there was much rejoicing.
  • I was thinking the same thing. Out of all the planes, ships, boats, submarines, etc... from WWII, it seems like a needle in a haystack to narrow the possibility down to Ms. Earhart.

  • Re:Just like those (@*#&$ 3D posters.... (Score:4)

    by tetrad ( 131849 ) on Friday July 13, 2001 @06:37PM (#86131)
    Check out this analysis [tighar.org] from TIGHAR. The second page has a magnification of the photo where they think the plane is.
  • Actually, Private Teruo Nakamura stayed on a small island in Indonesia until 1973(!) thinking that WWII was still going on. He saw american planes overhead (going to Vietnam in the 60's) and that really convinced him. He wouldn't listen to anyone that the war was over, thinking that it was an American trick. They actually had to get the guy's old commanding officer to coax him out.. Wild story.

  • Airplane crashes? (Score:5)

    by No Such Agency ( 136681 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .yakcamba.> on Friday July 13, 2001 @06:21PM (#86133)
    OK, let's assume this IS a plane wreck, and not just an algal bloom, or a huge blob of toxic waste or whatever. What are the odds that it's Earhart's airplane? Some of you may recall that America and Japan had a little war in the Pacific Ocean a while ago, and both used a prodigious number of airplanes. Many of these are unaccounted for. It could be a B-17, a "Kate" flying boat or any number of other mid-sized planes that were tooling around the Pacific.

    That said, it'd be nice if Amelia Earhart was finally laid to rest, even if not literally. She was a pioneer whose dedication and skill probably inspired many young women to the realization that there was more to life than being June Cleaver.

  • This is fascinating, as is the story given at www.earhart.org [earhart.org] (helpfully found by the poster of comment #80 [slashdot.org]).

    According to www.earhart.org, the US government covered up the truth about Earhart's disappearance. Question: what motives would the government have for this?

  • researchers noticed two rust-colored computer pixels off the island's shoreline that Gillespie is convinced is metal debris.

    Ahhh, if you read other accounts, such as this ABC News / Reuters version [go.com], you learn this amazing discovery is really just two pixels! I dunno about you, but it seems foolish to launch an expedition based on a couple pixels.

  • You are mistaken, by a full hemisphere.
    She disappeared on landing approach to Howland Island in the Pacific.

    KFG
  • Nonsense, it was meerly missrouted to San Marino and is scheduled to be returned to her. . .

    Next Tuesday.

    KFG
  • Or in the song contemporaneous with her disappearance:

    There's a beautiful, beautiful field,
    far away in a land that is fair.
    Happy landings to you Amelia Earhart,
    farewell, first lady of the air.

    KFG
  • Yes, but it would be unbelieveably difficult. Ground telescopes that use so called aperture synthesis can achieve resolutions which approximate the resolution you would expect if you had one huge telescope the size of the separation distance or "baseline" of the two smaller separated telescopes(the basic idea of astronomical interferometery), but there is a (BIG)catch. In order to 'get fringes' or achieve interferometry, you must combine the light from the array of telescopes with the same high tolerances that you would need to use with one giant telescope the size of the baseline. That means the mirrors and beam splitters/combiners of the entire system must be held to within 1/10th of a fraction of the wavelength of light that you are observing with. If you assume yellow light with a wavelength of 5X10^-7 meters you would have to know the positions of the optics in the system to within 50 Nanometers or billionths of a meter. This is possible on earth and is even being done on large scales such as at Keck and the ESO's VLT [eso.org]. If you can figure out a way for two telescopes orbiting the earth 200Km up(and varying in altitude by METERS everyday because of drag with the upper atmosphere) to know their position with respecto to eachother to within a tiny fraction of the diameter of a hair, let me know; the King of Sweden wants to see you. (BTW this trick is not so hard at centemeter wavelenghts; the baseline of this [nrao.edu] system stretches [nrao.edu] from Hawaii to New Hampshire and the resolution in this [nrao.edu] VLBA image is nearly 1000 times higher than the hubble space telescope can achieve.)

  • The resolving power of an optical instrument is defined by it's ability to separate the images of two adjacent objects. Something called the diffraction limit, inherent to all optical devices prevents infinite resolution from being achieved simply by increasing magnification. The minimum angular separation of two objects that can be resolved by a round aperture is given by the eqation: X=1.22*L/D, where D is the diameter of the aperture L is distance from telescope. Realistically, you can assume an absolute maximum of 3 meters for a primary optic(bigger than hubble), about a 160km orbit and 500nm visible light wavelength measurement. Or X=1.22*5X10^-6*1.6X10^5/3=0.33 meters or 33 centimeters or about a foot. remember that this is not even taking into account atmospheric effects (think looking at a penny on the bottom of a pool) and it does not mean you can see your face because it's about this size, it means your face will show up as a dot.

  • space imaging technology (Score:3)

    by cr@ckwhore ( 165454 ) on Friday July 13, 2001 @06:12PM (#86142) Homepage
    Anybody else find it extremely amazing that an object's color, under the ocean, can be identified by a satelite? Anybody want to try proving that they *can't* see my face from space?

    Don't forget your sunglasses.

  • As long as they cannot see when I am picking my nose. That would be cool if it turns out to really be her plane. We will see.
  • I think that sexy model marrying the doctor was a bit bogus. I mean, come on, even though it's TV-PG how are they supposed to uh.. do a little "peer to peer file exchanging" if ya know what I mean...

    C'mon, man... it was a "system extension."

  • Is the island nothing but rock and sand, with no food? But the space.com article babbles on about GPS helping so they won't have to hack through teeming jungles with machetes, apparently. Was there no food to be found in all that jungle? Either they were mortally injured in the crash, or injured such that they could not gather food, or they died by some other accident ("I ated the purple berries!"), or the island had no food on it, or (as is more likely) they died because there was no fresh water (but how could there be jungle without some fresh water?)

    I would, in all seriousness, recommend that you trek on down to your local public library and take a look at some books on wilderness survival, or at least a good book on camping/backpacking, on the off chance that you might find yourself stranded somewhere not near a convenience store. Wilderness areas, including so-called "desert isles"(remember, a desert isn't completely bereft of life; it's merely an environment that isn't particularly suited for human habitation and/or cultivation), pose any number of risks. For one thing, "fresh" water is by no means necessarily drinkable; even if you're drinking spring water in the mountains, it's a good idea to treat it first. Yes, there is the problem of the purple berries; more likely, there may not be anything particularly nutritious on a given desert isle. I'm thinking that probably you have an image of a Garden of Eden type of tropical paradise from Gilligan's Island or Lord of the Flies(and, remember, even those kids occasionally got the shits from something that they ate). There could be all sorts of diseases that the local fauna might be carrying that they've adapted to, but that are fatal to humans. Bottom line: if no one is already living on the island, there might be a really good reason why.

  • I guess that episode for Star Trek Voyager just wasn't true. I'm going to have to look back and see what else about that series might have been bogus!
  • As long as they use some sort of TCP based protocol to guarantee that the payload is received...

  • All of the junk from the Norwich City has been washing away in the opposite direction from the anomoly.


    --
  • that AE was abducted by aliens and put in suspended animation until the Federation Starship Voyager discovered her.
  • "The 'cost to advertiser' is the amount a GoTo advertiser chooses to pay each time a customer clicks that advertiser's listing in our search results.
  • I think it would be really interesting to figure out what exactly goes on in the Bermuda triangle. More ships and planes have been lost there than anywhere else

    Bullshit. You've been reading too much Berlitz methinks. If you want to know what really goes on in the Bermuda triangle, check out James Randis book "Flim Flam!". An old one, but it covers the claims made a bout the triangle in great detail.

    What it boils down to, is that the area has no more ship/plane wrecks or disappearences than any other place along the american coast. The myth about the triangle came to be mostly because of horribly bad journalism, and total lack of research.

  • Great post. But here's a question: Couldn't a spy satellite be designed to use interferometry to create a large virtual mirror with a greater resolving power than a single physical mirror? I believe this technique is used in ground-based telescopes to great effect. While I'd imagine the engineering issues of getting such a thing up on a satellite would be quite daunting, isn't it possible to do this in principle?
  • Wow, that is a really informative explanation. Thanks! It's always a refreshing surprise to get a truly knowledgeable response to a question on slashdot.

    I knew that interferometry required a lot of precision, but I think my mental picture was off by a few orders of magnitude. :-) In fact, given these tolerances, I'm frankly amazed it's even possible (at visual wavelengths) on the ground -- you'd think that every little thing like thermal expansion of the telescope components would be enough to ruin your fringes (though I suppose that kind of thing is compensated for).

  • Doh. It looks like we had saved that satellite photo is jpg format with excessive compression.

    -
    Investigator
  • Gee boss, I'm out of vacation time but I just found this picture of something rust colored that's not too far from Hawaii. How bout you pay for me to go and erm... investigate it.
  • Well, I've heard those theories before; and I've seen some of the evidence to suggest it. But it doesn't seem as likely to me as simply getting lost. She took off with a bad adf, a worn airplane, and a drunk of a navigator. We kind of take the modern conveniences (VOR's, GPS's, even modern ADF's) for granted. She wasn't feeling good when she left. The airplane had been through numerous maintenance "skwaks." The ADF was dead. Noonan was undoubtedly as tired and worn as she was (and maybe back on the bottle.) Honestly, It doesn't have to be anything more elaborate than getting lost. Fate is conspiratorial enough.
  • Frederick Noonan, her navigator, had a drinking problem. That probably was a more of a factor in her getting lost than bad piloting.
  • Do you always walk around staring up? I rest my case.

    Seriously though, it's been said that if the Hubble Space Telescope were placed in New York City, ignoring the curvature of the earth and other interfering factors, it could read the year on a dime in San Fran. Calif. Try proving they can't count the number of hairs on my head from space.

    "// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

  • The most frequently observed celestial object is Earth. Earth is observed regularly for calibration--to make sure that all the charge-coupled detectors (CCDs) are working properly. The images from these "test" observations show no detail.

    Just found this on HubbleSite [stsci.edu], which is an official Hubble Space Telescope site. <conspiracy theory>Notice it says they don't photograph earth in detail, not that they couldn't, and 'test' is in quotes, as in, "we're just calling them tests".</conspiracy theory> I don't think "they" are watching us, if they are they have way too much time on their hands, but I think someone could present a plausable argument saying otherwise.

    "// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"

  • I look and look, but I still don't see anything. Wish they drew a box around it or did something for us non-GIS (or whatever the field is) impaired.

    I still think those posters are some sort of sick joke - "If you look just right, you can see... wink, wink".

  • Thanks for the pointer to the second page. Two rust colored pixels, five if you go high-res black and white - not a chance of finding them on the space.com site.

    For anyone looking, try this [tighar.org] link. I missed the link the first time thinking that the island picture was it. Thanks for the pointer tetrad.

  • ...is why, if they supposedly soft-landed (the article states this guy's idea that they managed a soft landing and then the tide swept the ship out), then why did they die?

    They vanished in '37. Brits discovered bones and no live humans in '40. Is the island nothing but rock and sand, with no food? But the space.com article babbles on about GPS helping so they won't have to hack through teeming jungles with machetes, apparently. Was there no food to be found in all that jungle?

    Either they were mortally injured in the crash, or injured such that they could not gather food, or they died by some other accident ("I ated the purple berries!"), or the island had no food on it, or (as is more likely) they died because there was no fresh water (but how could there be jungle without some fresh water?), or it's a sunken Zero from WW2, or (as is most likely), some nut is reading a bit too much into two off-color pixels in a satellite image.

    You pays your money and you takes your choice.

    -Kasreyn
  • There's 12318241398 Gazillion (very wild guess) unclassified species, a majority of which sit in the ocean, and they can honestly say that there's nothing that produces a rust color naturally???

  • Or it could be... (Score:3)

    by tarbabyxxxx ( 241558 ) <n6jpa&yahoo,com> on Friday July 13, 2001 @06:20PM (#86164) Homepage
    A sunken ship, a old WWII plane wreck or some shipper lost a cargo container overboard in a bad storm. I wonder who is paying for this weird obesssion of Ameila Earhart?
    --
  • Junked WWII jeeps, tanks, planes, boats, munitions, unopened spam, 100,000 unused can openers... etc etc etc
  • Mabye the bermuda Triangle sucked up Atlantis.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Just to err on the side of Star Trek, Fermat's Last Theorem has no simple proof, the solution that exists is about 150 pages long, and is too complex for the 17th century.

    There are some who suspect that Fermat has deluded himself into thinking he had a simple proof. However, there is a small chance of him having an elegant proof that we haven't found yet.

    Oh, yes, I read that link...

  • I'm pretty concerned about this. If the government finds out the exact number of hairs on my head, well, I don't know what I'd do!

    ___
  • Two dark brown pixels are definitely proof that the plane is there!

    Tim
  • So how do they know it's just not part of that other reck?

    Did she survive the crash? If she is still a live on the island, how old is she going to be?


    --

  • Why don't you read the article on the site he linked to?

    Why? I've already read it, actually I read it before I posted. Now, why do you believe that they are right? Just because you've read the article, or looked at the pictures?

    It explains why they know it isn't from the shipwreck. The waves were rushing south and southwest, never north.

    And this doesn't strike anybody else as a bit far fetched?

    I spend a lot of my time by and in the Ocean. I watch the Pacific almost daily, sand bars come and go, junk can be washed in land or stuck under the sand or wash out to sea.

    I've been around for some some big storms, where lots damage is done, ships and boat are washed in land or miles up rivers and need towed back out (if they are sea worthy). Now here's the really gottya, even when big ships are wash up against trees and houses, deberries still get washed out to sea. Of course to make it even more likely that this is part of the Norwich City (the recked ship), look at the deberry scatter, it lines up with rush spot and the Norwich, Heavy wave action can back wash items back into the wave direction. Also with all the waves washing up they have to go somewhere with all that water, so a rip will be formed (look around the reck for a channel), this will suck broken off bits out a little, then it wouldn't be too hard for it to be washed up the coast a little bit.


    --

  • I'm sorry but michael's "outhouse" reference totally went over my head. Could someonce explain it please?
  • Jimmy Hoffa has been located via satellite imaging in the Northeast corner of the New York Giants End-zone. While Elvis has been spotted, by the same satellite, in New York City posing as a delivery man for a local watering hole... More Details to follow.

  • Still missing (Score:5)

    by JBowz15 ( 451573 ) on Friday July 13, 2001 @06:02PM (#86189)
    In related news, Amelia Earhart's luggage remains missing.

    Finally, the Rock has come back to /.

  • There's more evidence (Score:3)

    by gcox ( 467610 ) on Friday July 13, 2001 @07:31PM (#86198)
    Mentioned in the article, "Bones were found on the island by a British group in 1940. Also found was a campfire, a box designed to hold a sextant and the heel of a woman's shoe." It's not like they found a rust spot in the Pacific and decided it was Earhart. It sounds like they were looking for confirmation this was the island. (Why, I can't say)

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