Beacon cuts off forever. But what if the plane is sitting on the bottom of the ocean with time running out . Well look at an underwater retrieval. What if something happened to incapacitate everyone on board and the plane flew itself on auto pilot until it ran out of fuel . Good afternoon, everyone. Im jake tapper. Two major developments this hour in the now twoweek search for flight 370 and the 239 souls on board. One involves that possible debris spotted on satellite images. The other involves the data erased from the Flight Simulator seized from the captains home. U. S. Officials say the fbi team examining that data is confident that agents will be able to recover at least some of the information. The malaysians saw nothing of concern on the hard drive but our source says they could not access everything on it and its not clear whether the malaysians even have the technology to do it. And while the fbi works on that, searchers are following what australias Prime Minister called today, quote, the first tangible breakthrough in what until now has been a baffling mystery. These are satellite images showing what could, could be debris from flight 370. Two pieces in the southern indian ocean about 1500 miles off the australian coast. On the left, what youre looking at appears to be something big, about 24 meters, 79 feet long. On the right, thats a smaller piece, 5 meters, 16 feet long. But the ships and aircraft dispatched to that debris have not found the possible debris yet. Perhaps because the satellite images were taken four days ago. One expert says that the debris or whatever it is could have drifted 1,000 miles from that location by now. Spotting it again is no easy task because the parameters are in an area described by australias defense minister as one of the most isolated places on earth. High winds, high current and weather that can change without any warning. Jim sciutto, lay it out for us. Where was the debris spotted and where is the search focusing . Remember that refined area, 1500 miles southwest of australia. This debris found just to the southeast of that, not too far, between 100 miles between here and there, here are the images and that move would make sense. Its currently moving in this direction. This is the bigger piece, about 79 feet. This one about 16, 17 feet. These are 14 miles apart and what is interesting about the big one, its got a lot of pieces, small debris which could indicate, they say, could indicate a debris field. So right now youve got a whole host of resources nying to this area. Youve got a p8 aircraft. This is a new Surveillance Aircraft flying. There are p7 orion, another subcraft air hunter. They have parascopes from submarines and they are trying to spot this debris. Its a long flight. Its a fourhour flight here. They only get a couple hours on site and then another fourhour flight back and when they did this yesterday the weather was pretty bad and they couldnt see anything. Once light hits, they are going to head back and have a closer look. We talked about there being two search arcs. Is the northern arc not being looked at at all now . They are still dedicating resources in the north. Laos is looking, vietnam, kazakhstan, helicopters are searching the sat lime images. But its really down here that they believe is the strongest possibility as to whether the plane ended up. And just an idea of the allocation of resources there. 29 aircraft involved in this search. Four of them are up here. 25 of them are down here and the chinese are sending another four ships in this direction, too. That gives you a sense of where they really think the most likely chance of this plane being. Jim sciutto, thank you so much. How likely is it that this debris from flight 370, that this is what it is, exactly. And if this is debris from flight 370, what next . Lets bring in safety analyst and author of why planes crash, the fight for safe skies and former ntsb air safety investigator and also worked for the faa and the u. S. Air force. Hes author of the book air safety investigators using science to save lives one crash at a time. The Australian Government, the officials there have given these images a lot of credibility. The Prime Minister appearing before parliament to talk about this. Judging from the size and location of what is shown in these images, how likely do you think that this is debris from a plane crash . Well, i hold back on making a comment as to what i think it is because at this point theres no evidence what it is, exactly. In fact, the concern that i have, both of these images and objects are about the size of containers. They come in 20 foot, 40 foot, and 80foot lengths. So Im Holding Back to say that it is debris but the good thing is, the merchant ship is out there. Even if they find this and fly over the top of it, its going to be very difficult to identify it as part of the aircraft but now that the merchant shift is there, theyll be able to lift it up and verify it and move forward with the investigation. Alan, lets talk about what would still be floating at this point, theoretically, two weeks after a plane crash. Would there still be debris floating in the ocean . Its possible. But a large chunk of debris, im with david, that may well be a shipping container but there could be, you know, if the plane ran out of gas, its possible wings got severed on impact and with empty fuel tanks, they might still be floating, this long after the event. David, jim just eluded to this new aircraft that they have for the search. They didnt have it when they were looking for air france 447 in 2009. Its the u. S. P8 poseidon. What make it is so special . It has the ability to locate drones. We didnt have the ability to have a centralized kind of like a sars managing where they searched and based on what they find, tightening the search based on that. Its a very advanced aircraft. They cost 33 million each and excuse me. 200 million each and the government spent 33 billion just since 2013. At the end of the day, whether its the person on the p8 poseidon, it comes with the person looking with cameras or closed circuit from the drones, right . Not entirely, no. Because theres not a lot of farce material in the bottom of the ocean. If theres iron, steel, not necessarily aluminum, but hard surface under there. The bottom of the ocean is not what we experienced about 447, which was rocky. From what i understand, this area is much more smooth and level which gives the poseidon a much better opportunity to actually map and look at the bottom of the ocean, although its 6,000 feet would make that difficult. I still think there is hope, even if this material went to the bottom, that we would find something through using those aircraft. David, its people who ultimately determine what they see. Thats all i mean by that. Yeah. As far as what youre finding on the surface. But it does have the ability to look below the surface because its made to look for submarines, is what it is designed for a. Dr. Diehl, if this is debris, what will they do considering this is debris. Perhaps we can tell what happened. In the air france accident we realized right away that it was a high, flat impact. Nose high, sort of flat impact. But the other thing that i would certainly bring up here is, yes, the p8 poseidon is very capable but there are not many of them and they have 150 p3 orions. They are quite capable and we need to start the big pinger hunt. A couple dozen aircraft are fine but we probably need a few more resources and the u. S. Navy has large quantities. I mentioned 150. The japanese have 100. The australian have about 12. So we may have to go with the oldtech. Its still pretty good when youre looking for the pingers. How many do you think we would need out there . Id call up the reserve unit and dispatching at least 50. Ive done a back of the envelope calculation. If we could get 50 from our resources, maybe 25 from the japanese and another 25 from around the world, brazilians and so on, the indians have a few, we could put together a grid search. Weve only got two weeks. If we dont find these things in the next two weeks, unlike air france where we knew exactly where it is, or south france 747, same thing, we knew roughly where it was. We still have a vast area to cover and i do think we needs lots of equipment out there, even if it is lowtech. When it comes to looking at pingers, those p3s are still pretty good. Finding the black box. Why malaysian Officials Say they may not be able to find it before it goes silent. 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Thats your moment of trulia. Download the free trulia app today. Welcome back to the lead. The clock is ticking. Every minute that passes the chances of finding out what happened on board flight 370. The cockpit and data voice recorders do have a locator beacon that can send out a signal. But as our aviation correspondent explains, that transponder will soon run out of power. Reporter this debris may be the best hint yet to what happened to flight 370. But even if it is from the missing plane, the real key to understanding what happened could be miles away at the bottom of the ocean and its calling but time is running out. The cockpit voice recorders stores at least two hours of data and the Recorder Stores 36 hours of instrument data. Both crucial to what happened. Transmitters send out a locating tone but that only lasts for 30 days. Malaysian Officials Say without the pings, they dont have the technology to find them on their own. Before that becomes an issue, let me tell you that the malaysian submarines do not have that technology. Reporter the boxes may have gone further than anything else surfaced. The ocean can be 13,000 feet deep, more than ten times the height of the empire state building. It becomes a situation of trying to hear a very tiny signal in a really complex background noise and thats a hoard problem no matter what, made very worse by this being deep. Reporter these tones can be heard from two miles away but only if a special listening device is in the water. One bit of good news, the data is preserved long after the pingers go silent. It took two years for investigators to find the black boxes on the bottom of the atlantic ocean. The data was still there. Since the recorder is only two hours long, theres no guarantee it will answer every question as to what happened to flight 370. Well, one major manufacturer of pingers says that since the flight of air france 447, theres been a request for pingers to be applied to the body of the plane, not just the black boxes. They would be required to have a range of 6 to 10 nautical miles. Thats much more than the 2 nautical miles and the minimum battery life would be extended to 90 days instead of 30 and these proposed rules would only be applied to newly manufactured planes. Rene marsh, washington. If the black box battery runs out and the pings stop, how will they find the black box . Ian is joining me. Explain how investigators can find the black box if they no longer have the ping . Listening devices and trying to find ominous objects on the bottom and try to zero in on that. You have to go to the bottom of the ocean and search usually a large area with in a nested way, starting in a big area and honing in as the evidence begins to indicate where the debris might be. I want to get your take on something thats developed in the last couple of hours. A lecturer at the ocean nothiog center said that he sees something that looks like an oil slick near the left that were seeing on the screen. Our Richard Quest indicates that it would not be an oil slick. It would be more like a sheen. Can you tell us whether you conclude that its an oil slick or not . I would certainly like to say that it is but i cannot, based on the images that i see, say that it is. The sea state was about 10 to 12foot waves and wind at 25 knots. I would have a hard time believing that a jet would produce an oil slick after two weeks. They are going to need certain vehicles to assist with the search. Lets go through them. Lets show this man craft that the chinese have that you think could be very helpful. Tell us what it is. This is one of the deepest Diving Research submersibles in the world. The chinese took it to a depth of over 7,000 meters in 2012. So they clearly have been working hard to up great their capability for deep water ocean. I would not be at all surprised to see the chinese take an active role in trying to find this aircraft. 7,000 meters. And people go in that . Thats right. Its a batterypowered submarine. It has a limited time on the bottom so it would have to be used for a targeted search. But they have the capabilities of reaching all of the depths. And then there is this one, that found the air wreckage of flight 447. How do these vehicles work . These are launched on a program so the operators locate a search pattern and then the vehicle is deployed, dives to the bottom, usually operates at 100 feet or more off the bottom and looks with sonar and other listening devices and tries to find the debris. It goes back and forth mowing a lawn and can operate for periods of up to 24 hours and then its recovered and operators download the data and they look to see if theyve discovered anything. Almost like an underwater drone there. Thats talk about the rovs, remotely operated vehicles. How is this used in the search . Once they located the debris, they have an umbilical cord that runs from the equipment to the surface. They can see everything in realtime and they have the mechanical arms and claws and lifters that can untangle debris and this is the way that the black box would have possibly been recovered. I think they raised the debris using a ship and were able to recover the black box from that. This would be crucial. The technology would be crucial for manipulating the wreckage and untangling this mystery. Ian macdonald, thank you so much for your time. When we come back, the best lead and its from four days ago . Why did it take so long for australia to show the at light photos . Plus, why did the plane take a left turn only to presumably fly on for others and others. Some are wondering whether the jets autopilot allowed the plane to stay in the air after everyone on board may have been knocked unconscious. Feed it, and care for it, dont we grow something more . We grow big celebrations, and personal victories. We grow new beginnings, and better endings. Grand gestures, and perfect quiet. We grow escape, bragging rights, happier happy hours. So lets gro something greater with miraclegro. What will you grow . Share your story at miraclegro. Com. If yand youre talking toevere rheuyour rheumatologistike me, about a biologic. This is humira. This is humira helping to relieve my pain. This is humira helping me lay the groundwork. This is humira helping to protect my joints from further damage. Doctors have been prescribing humira for ten years. Humira works by targeting and helping to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. Humira is proven to help relieve pain and stop further joint damage in many adults. 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Satellite data imagery from digital globe downloaded and transferred to the geospacial intelligence organiza