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Specification says 14,763 feet. but obviously, the ocean at this point could be a little bit deeper than that. it's not fully mapped. so they don't know. i know any change in depth at that far below the surface, it could be an incredible change in pressure. is the bluefin able to operate outside its formal range if it needed to? >> yes. the bluefin standard 21 that phoenix has is rate to 4500 meters. and as you noted, that's about two and a half miles down. at that depth, the pressure is equivalent to having the weight of a cadillac escalade on your thumbnail. it's also slightly above freezing...

The sound and some instances where the sound is traveling unobscured but other cases you don't. >> jeff, what do you think of that theory? >> that's certainly true in the case of air france as well. i know that they did not hear the pings, but the train there was very, i guess, mountainous is the way to say that underwater. so we know that the sea floor is not flat there. >> what's the longest you think those batteries could last, jeff? >> so our official answer is 30 days. the design margin is about 10% above that, and that's at the end of life or that's at the end of the six-year maintenance...

Replaced, and so we have test data that verifies that the product will still operate for 30 days after six years. and we actually have some small design margin on top of that just to make sure that they all make it 30 days. >> so it's possible it could be -- you know, give or take a week or so, it's possible it could be pinging rather strongly. at the other end of the spectrum, it could be getting really weak. >> these correct. when we say 30 days, at the end of the battery's -- at the end of the time, that's when it no longer meets its requirement. that means it no longer produces the sound a...

Should answer for us? >> yeah. jeff, it's richard quest in new york. the ceo of malaysia airlines says that the batteries on the pinger were due to expire in june of this year. now, those batteries are normally -- have quite a long life span. should we be concerned that even though they're not at the expiration date, they're pretty close to it, and would they still have had sort of maximum oomph if you like? >> so our design and validation process does confirm at the end of six years that the device will still operate for 30 days. we do have design margin in there, so when we published, it was...