Two New Pinger Signals Detected
BOLDUAN: Welcome back to NEW DAY. Overnight major developments in the search for Flight 370. Two new signals have been detected by search crews in the Indian Ocean. If this is the missing plane, it will be a tremendous task to try to recover it even once they located specifically the black boxes. I'm standing here at our -- at the top of our staircase to help give you a real sense of, a better sense of just how deep and challenging the Indian Ocean is where the crews are looking. Let's put up this animation just to give you some perspective, some comparisons. See the sea level at the very top. If you're scuba diving you're going to be around about over 100 feet. Empire State Building, we've used that comparison a few times, that's over 1,000 feet. That's nowhere near where we're working right now. If you're looking then at the Grand Canyon, another comparison that we've used before, that's over -- that's over 5,000 feet you're looking at. And then the Titanic. This is wreckage they've used some of these special vehicles that they will hopefully use this time around when they get there. The Titanic was wreckage was discovered at over 12,000 feet. Yet again, not even at the level what we're talking about here. Let's bring in Jeff Wise, CNN aviation analyst, to talk about this search today. It really shows you the perspective of what you're dealing with. It's deeper than anything we've looked at before. The TPL, when we're towing that, almost 10,000 feet below the surface. The pings they picked up, that's over 13 -- some 13,000 feet below the surface. Just what are the challenges that these depths that they're dealing with even though they're pretty optimistic they've found the right spot?</s>JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: They're optimistic, but there is a lot of challenges. We are talking about 3 miles down. You've got the weight of 3 miles of water on top of you. Water is heavy stuff. Talking about -- imagine an elephant, the weight of an elephant concentrated on an area the size of a postage stamp. That's the kind of crushing force you've got to deal with. Also it's dark. When you get down below 1,000 feet down, sunlight never penetrates and you're in this world of total permanent darkness. It's alien world down there. It's quiet, cold, and dark.</s>BOLDUAN: And then the seabed, it's just under 3 miles down. That's about 15,000 feet. They're talking about concerns or the impact of silt on finding the black box and on the search. What's the impact of that? Many of us have no idea what they're talking about when they talk about silt on the seabed.</s>WISE: Over the centuries, this sort of a debris that filters down from the surface world, things die and disintegrate and filter down and become clay like muck. And things fall into there and they can disappear. We don't really know, it hasn't been characterized what's down there, is it mountainous, rugged, flat? They've been reluctant to deploy that autonomous underwater vehicle with the side scan sonar that could characterize the bottom. I guess they're trying to keep it quiet down there so the tow can be quiet to detect those pings.</s>BOLDUAN: And another interesting thing as we look at this animation again and you see where the tow ping locator is. They were saying the area that can be covered by the tow ping locator in one day, if you put the autonomous underwater vehicle down there, it's so much slower, so much of a more difficult task, that would take six to seven days with a tow ping locator can do in one day. Kind of helps us understand why they're not yet putting it down there.</s>WISE: Right. They're trying to narrow it down as much as possible. They're trying to get that last few bits of signal before the battery is completely dead, before they've convinced themselves that the battery is dead, there's no chance left. Then they will deploy the underwater vehicle.</s>BOLDUAN: When you take all of this under consideration, the depths, the challenges of what happens when you get down there, are you yet convinced that these pings are the black box?</s>WISE: Well, you know, remember the frequency doesn't match. There's been some speculation that there might be some reasons why the frequency has changed.</s>BOLDUAN: Battery life, depth.</s>WISE: Consistent with it. But it's not that kind of smoking gun that you really want where it's exactly the right frequency. So after a month of this bizarre saga that we've been through, it's all come down to the cylinder of ocean, about 12 miles across or so, about 3 miles deep. This dark, cold, you know, alien world. And we're trying to find out what's in this cylinder, if it's there, great. If it's not there, well, boy, we're really back to square one.</s>BOLDUAN: Especially when we are at -- we are even past what should be the battery life of these pingers. They still want more pings at these -- it's pretty amazing that they are going to be able to pull it off. Jeff, great to see you. Thanks for your perspective. I appreciate it -- Chris.</s>CUOMO: All right, Kate, let's take a break here on NEW DAY. When we come back, breaking news in the Oscar Pistorius trial. Did the Blade Runner change his story? Prosecutors think so and they're coming at him hard. We're going to bring you more of his testimony. Plus, a married congressman caught on tape kissing an equally married staffer. Either you care or you don't as a voter, but what if you're her husband. He's speaking out and you may be surprise by his take.