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It will take years to do that at the size the area is now, so they will need to try and get as much out of these pings as possible, actually narrow down further and further. >> so, ironically, almost -- and you made this point yesterday, john -- almost taking your time doing the work now, as much work as you can now to narrow that range, that area, so that it's not so labor-intensive on the other side. >> absolutely. absolutely. if you invest a little bit more time now on the surface listening for these pings, and you have to be very quiet then. i think that's important to realize that you can...

Is a new challenge, which is silt, the silt on the ocean floor here, some 2.8 miles deep. tell me what kind of challenges that will pose. >> yeah, so, in some ways, it's a good sign that there is a lot of silt down there, because that means that, actually, the currents aren't that strong. what this silt is, it's essentially dead plankton. it's the carcasses of everything that lived above it, including, for instance, things also like fish poo. fish poo slowly falling down through the ocean and at the end ending up on the ocean floor. and because the currents aren't very strong, it will actually...

Lot, lot smaller. how much smaller is it based on the fact that those pings were found about, what, 17 miles apart? >> well, you know, we're giving the towed pinger locator a 1 to 2 mile detection range and actually it might be a little bit manufacture because of the altered frequency that we're hearing. the water actually absorbs that energy less, so the sound can travel farther. so maybe the tpls can see quite a bit differently farther than we expected. but at any rate, let's say you gave it maybe twice the detection range so they could see 5 miles, then the pings we have detected are 17 mil...

Smaller one, as long as they can get pings. that's why they keep trying, every bit of data they can get helps make that box smaller. witness you go underwater at these depths to do something about it, you'll need all of the help you can get. >> parts of the ocean floor well known, well tracked, we know the topography. more of the ocean floor we know nothing about. what do we know about the ocean underneath the surface area you're pointing out? >> what we know here is that a difference that is relatively small in the lateral sense can make a very big difference in a depth sense. take a look at ...

To cover the same area as the towed pinger locator. once found, it could take months to recover the boxes. the water in this area can be miles deep. recreational scuba divers only go down about 130 feet. the empire state building submerged would only go down 1,000 feet. light from the surface stops at 3,000 feet. the grand canyon, over 5,000 feet deep, and that still wouldn't even come close to reaching the ocean floor. the titanic was discovered more than 12,000 feet down, but the black boxes are believed to be even further than that. more than 14,000 feet underwater. >> well, analysis of the...