[Ashleigh Banfield, Cnn Anchor:] We're going to return to our breaking news coverage of the mass stabbing at a high school outside of Pittsburgh in just a few minutes, but we've also got another major story developing this hour. Just when the hopes were fading right alongside those batteries that were fading on the black-box pingers, we've got two new sets of pings that have been detected and it's prompted this rather stunning announcement about the search for Flight 370.
[Angus Houston, Joint Agency Coordination Center:] I'm now optimistic that we will find the aircraft or what's left of the aircraft in the not too distant future.
[Banfield:] The same Australian ship and United States listening equipment that detected pings twice over the weekend, well, they detected the pings again, or at least sounds that were certainly consistent with the pings, and it was on two separate occasions yesterday. The now four encounters came within 17 miles of one another. The new signals slightly weaker than the first signals, albeit, and this time only one telltale pulse, not the two as you'd expect if you're looking for separate pingers on both the plane's flight-data and the cockpit- voice recorders. And still, after 33 days, there is no physical trace of the Boeing 777 or anything inside it that has turned up. Today, 15 different aircraft, 14 different ships, all of them crisscrossing the search area that authorities have greatly reduced now as their confidence seems to have grown. And, once more, I turn to my CNN colleague Will Ripley who is in Perth live at this hour. Will, this the time yesterday we were hearing how vital it was to just reacquire the signals, but there had been a long silence. They were picked up, then it seemed they were lost, but now the reacquisition's happened. And we just heard this normally very reserved Australian search coordinator has changed his tune somewhat. He made a pretty bold prediction. Has this search been completely re-energized?
[Will Ripley, Cnn Correspondent:] Yeah, absolutely, Ashleigh, and you're right. It was striking to a lot of us who have listened to Angus Houston, day in and day out, use so much caution, caution, by the way, that he's still using, simply because, as you pointed out, there's no physical evidence, nothing tangible yet, no piece of Flight 370 that's been spotted or recovered in the Indian Ocean. But what we do have is now four pings, and they're going to continue listening as long as they can to try to zero in on the location, because each time they hear a ping, they can get a better idea of where these data recorders might be. And that's when they're the next step would be to actually deploy the submersible and go down and take a look. But they're definitely not there yet, Ashleigh. They want to keep listening as long as those black boxes are potentially emitting those signals.
[Banfield:] And just quickly, Will, yesterday, you and I were speaking live at this very hour, and as it turns out, when we were having a conversation about the deafening silence that these teams were experiencing, they actually were not. They actually were detecting things. It just takes a while for them to get that information to us. It seems it takes them 12 hours, which makes me ask you about right now. It's 12:30 Eastern time, here in America. It's 12:30 at night, your time. I'm sure it's the exact question you're wondering, if they're actually making detections as we speak?
[Ripley:] Absolutely. And, you know, we are on the phone around the clock getting updates. What we've noticed is they're holding these press conferences. They're calling them with relatively short notice when they have something to announce. So, when we heard there was going to be another press conference, we all had a pretty good idea there would be something to announce, and sure enough, we learned two more pings. One thing that was really striking, too, Ashleigh, you know there are preparations under way here in Perth to accommodate the families if they choose to fly here. Angus Houston, he said, when these families come, they will be looked after. He used the word when, not if, and that's the first time that he's spoken with such confidence the families will be coming here.
[Banfield:] And the confidence we expect to find this plane within a matter of days, that's some language that, you know, you just don't use when you are a man of his ilk. Will Ripley, as always, terrific work. Thank you for that, and report back to us the minute you hear if they're hearing anything. And, by the way, even if the search teams are closer than ever to the remains of MH-370, the last two-and-a-half miles of this journey is certainly going to be the hardest. That's how deep, give or take, the ocean is where those pings are being picked up, and tracing them back takes a whole lot of know-how and probably a pretty serious amount of luck as well. I'm joined now by CNN's meteorologist Chad Myers in Atlanta and, from Boston, Tom Altshuler, who's the v.p. and general manager of Teledyne Marine System. That's the company that makes and designs undersea communications gear, including the pingers and also the pinger detectors. All right, Chad, I want to start with you. Will Ripley was telling us about effectively what we have. We've got four hit zones, but they're 17 miles apart, and they seem to me, you know, the neophyte in this game, to be in a very strange pattern. Can you help us make sense why they would be so disparate and in such a strange shape?
[Chad Myers, Ams Meteorologist:] We assume, you know, just from the layperson, we look at the pinger, we think, oh, it's going to ping just like a bell. It's going to go everywhere. It's going to go in every direction. That may not be the case because of the ocean floor. We know the ocean floor is a little bit rugged here. We also know that it's made of muck. Thousands, millions of years of fish number two, scales, whatever, food has fallen down here and made a very mucky bottom. So when this pinger hit the ground, did it stay up on top? Probably not. Did it tumble down into a little crevice? Probably. Did it settle down into the muck even more? Yes, sure, probably. So rather than a ping that looks like this and goes all directions, omni-directional, it probably is more like a cone here. And so when you pull the pinger locator through this, you might miss it. But also it could mean echoes off some of this topography, where this it wouldn't be a cone that goes straight up. It may go to the side a little bit if it's bouncing off some topography here. It may go to that side. And so the 17 miles is more of a factor of, you know I don't like the fact that it's 17 miles, but if this thing is still pinging loudly, here's what we have. We have these ships that are dragging themselves across. We have to understand, too, Ashleigh, that this cord is two-and-a-half miles long. It's like trying to catch a fish. You've got a tuna on the other end of your line, but you've got a two-and-a-half miles worth of fishing line out there. Where is that tuna? It could be wiggling back and forth back through here because of the currents under the water. It had a very long two-and-a-half hour ping right through the middle, I believe, but then it had a shorter ping as it turned around. It takes a long time for this ship to turn around, almost three hours to turn around, reeling in its receiver, sending it back out, and then it made a smaller slice through a different part of this cone or of this ping. And that's why we didn't see as much of the ping the second time around even though it was only about six or eight hours later.
[Banfield:] You make perfect sense. It's also remarkable that it is such an imperfect science, after all. This is the best of the best equipment, and yet, it is just so I don't know, it seems so rudimentary. Hold on for a second, Chad. I want to bring in Tom Altshuler for a second. Tom, I heard you say last night during this live news conference about the silt that Chad was talking about on the ocean floor and how it could be playing havoc not only with the pinging, but also with the wreckage. Some people are of the conviction that the wreckage could actually be swallowed by that muck. But I think it was you said who said, Maybe not. Maybe it's more like sediment on top of volcanic rock. What is your prediction of where this of this particular area, what might that ocean floor really look like?
[Thomas Altshuler, Teledyne Marine Systems:] That's a little hard to tell. I don't really know a lot about the ocean floor in that particular area. But typically in the deep ocean, you know, you have muck. But it's very common to put instruments down 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 meters in the ocean and have them sit on the bottom comfortably. So thinking that everything would just get swallowed up is probably unlikely, but you will have some material that goes into the muck if there's a lot of muck there. With a complex [inaudible] like you expect or the terrain that you expect down there, it's unknown how things will really look until you get down with a side-scan sonar.
[Banfield:] And when the director of this search said that he thinks we're going to find this plane in a matter of days, does that mean that the AUVs, those autonomous robotic vehicles, are probably being launched, either today or tomorrow? How could you possibly find it in a matter of days when those things aren't in the water yet?
[Altshuler:] No, they would need to put those in the water pretty quickly. If you think about it, what they're going to do next is take the area that has been laid out. You know, you have a relatively large area that's been laid out, 17 miles, and they're going to start doing what's called mowing the lawn. And so if you think about a lawn mower, it cuts a swath through an area and then you turn around and cut another swath. They'll do with that the sonars. Those swaths are only hundreds of meters wide, and so it will take a long time back and forth to really get an image. And so, you start doing a calculation on that and you're looking at days to go and really image the bottom there.
[Banfield:] Tom Altshuler, great to see you. Thank you for the insight on this particularly optimistic day. I'll just saying. And, Chad Myers, as always, you make the very complex seem very understandable. Our appreciation, thank you. I want to return in a moment now to this breaking news out of Pennsylvania. Listen, these kids who came to the hospital were telling the doctors they didn't see it coming, and they didn't see whoever stabbed them going, either. Such crowded confusion, kids were stabbed without even knowing who did it. We're going to give you the details in a moment.