Where On Earth Are They? Breaking Down The Theories Surrounding The Tragic Flight Of Malaysian Flight 370

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Thirteen days later and still no idea where on earth Malaysian Airlines flight 370 has ended up. With 26 countries on the hunt along with international intelligence and investigations teams working around the clock to decode the mystery, it’s almost unreasonable to accept that this commercial aircraft, hosting 239 passengers and crew, has literally disappeared. Short of some clues and a few thinly supported speculations and theories, the world continues to be left in the dark and families and friends of the missing lose patience. It’s at this point where one can’t help looking for possibilities outside the box… Or is the real answer the bleakest and simplest of them all?

Whether the plane was hijacked by either one of it’s pilots or by anyone of it’s passengers is unknown. What is clear, however, is that about an hour after the aircraft left Kuala Lumpur, all communication with air traffic control was ceased and the aircraft made a definitive U-turn heading west-ward. It also appears that the plane continued to fly for several hours at varying altitudes.

What is completely unknown: where they are now. The word “mystery” has been adopted by authorities, journalists and bloggers all over the world when trying to grasp an answer to this conundrum. In a time and society where surveillance is so all encompassing that George Orwell must be wriggling in his grave, it’s proven possible for a commercial plane loaded with passengers and crew to disappear. An irony difficult to overlook.

We’re reminded of the frantic phone calls and text messages from the passengers and flight attendants aboard the aircrafts that were hijacked on September 11. And yet when MH370 turned toward the Indian ocean and then supposedly spent nearly half an hour swooping over various parts of Malaysia, not a single text message was communicated. Mysterious indeed. Keith Bradsher from the NYTimes wrote, “The apparent absence of any word from the aircraft in an era of nearly ubiquitous mobile communications has prompted considerable debate among pilots, telecommunications specialists and others.” This debate centres around the high and low altitudes that the aircraft is believed to have travelled between. CNN reports that according to radar analysis, the plane is thought to have flown as high as 45,000 feet and as low as 23,000 feet, which would likely not have been low enough for cell phone connectivity. However other reports speculate that the plane flew as low as 5,000 feet, possibly to avoid radar detection – a tactic familiar to military pilots, which would have been low enough to get a message out or even to make a phone call.

If the flight had headed north west and landed safely, why then did none of the passengers or crew make contact through their cell phones? Cell phone reception is widely available in much of Western China and Eastern Kazakhstan. The safe-landing theory implies that the rest of the passengers and crew were or still are being held hostage. Of course the counter-argument to this is that it would be very hard to have landed the plane undetected by radars, and that to land it at all would have required about a 1 mile landing strip (at minimum). Moreover, Bradsher adds, “If the flight did land safely with the passengers and flight crew still healthy, whoever was in charge of the aircraft would also face a formidable task in any attempt to provide food, water and shelter for more than 200 people.”

The fire theory has gained some hefty traction also. Canadian pilot, Chris Goodfellow, believes that due to a cockpit fire the two pilots valiantly attempted an emergency landing in the Maldives – a theory allegedly supported by certain eye-witnesses in the region. Goodfellow wrote on Wired.com: “He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lumpur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.”

However, as CNN reports, growing evidence says that the plane flew for several hours after losing contact with air traffic control. This evidence contradicts the fire theory: if a fire did take place, it’s highly unlikely that the plane would have remained in the air for so many hours. Previous aircraft fires have brought planes down within an hour.

In the face of such a disastrous mystery, a rumble of alternative scientific theories have entered the discussion. Whilst I’ve never been one to entertain the idea of alien abductions, the possibility of a meteor obstruction is digestible. Although few are pursuing this theory seriously, it has been reported that a meteor was recorded around the same time that MH370 took off. The series of definitive action from within the cockpit seem to defy this theory, however.

Another wild but scientifically grounded theory has come from a quantum physics perspective: the idea of an alternate reality and the notion that atoms and molecules (the stuff that everything in the world breaks down to) travel in and out of reality. That is – the reality perceived by human consciousness. In What The Bleep Do We Know, the 2004 documentary that introduced quantum mechanics into popular culture, mystic, philosopher, and hierophant, Ramtha, explains that “science suggests to us that parallel universes are living simultaneously.” And quantum physicist, Amit Goswami adds, “It may sound like some bombastic claim by some new-agey… but really quantum physics is telling us that.” Michael Adams wrote on NaturalNews.com about the potential of a teleportation with regards to MH370, “this explanation sounds like pure science fiction and also seems extremely unlikely, yet we must at least acknowledge that modern physics has already demonstrated the instantaneous teleportation of information across apparently infinite space due to the “non-locality” of entangled electrons as described in quantum theory.”

Of course, the idea of the ill-fated MH370 passengers and crew being stuck in an alternate reality is way too wacky for even the most open minded to contemplate. And as quantum physicists themselves would admit, this kind of thinking is so great of a leap for our present day state of consciousness, that to really entertain it is near impossible. (Perhaps no more of a “mystery” than the missing people and aircraft, however.)

According to Malaysian officials, the search area has grown to a massive 2.24 million square nautical miles. With very little evidence to prove any theory until the most recent sighting of two objects via satellite announced by Australia’s Prime Minister that may or may not be related, perhaps the answer will be as simple and base as it was for Air France flight 447 in 2009 when it was discovered (a long time after the fact) in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s highly possible that our answer has sunken and remains in waiting at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.