Douglas M. Gaus
www.newproductconsultant.com

Tonight
We are young
So let’s set the world on fire
We can burn brighter than the sun

I can't help but think of the main chorus for Fun's 2012 anthem, We Are Young, regarding  Ann Makosinski's (fifteen years young!) invention.  She's from Victoria, B.C...I'll let her explain to you about the body heat powered flashlight she has been working on:

The product's innovation has a nice 'wow' factor, especially in a day and age where consumers are battery weary and quick to embrace new innovations that are eco-friendly and globally sustainable...The only small complaint i have, is in the video, she should have shot it at night time and outside, to demonstrate the model in use with a larger difference in ambient temperature and her hand's body heat, which would have demoed her prototype shining a brighter LED light...then she wouldn't have to apologize to the Youtube viewers for it not working as well as she says it can...Otherwise, a job very well done!

Inventing involves a lot of problem solving...It usually means creating something new where there is none.  But now, since there is none, the pieces of the puzzle need to be put back together to figure out what happened.  In this new post, I'm going to go out on a major limb and tell you what I think happened to the (most likely doomed) Malaysia Flight 370 this past week. 

It is based solely on hearing various news reports of the ongoing mystery and some minor additional investigative information I found on the internet.  I am only writing this in the hopes that it may help solve the mystery of a missing plane and its occupants, so that their loved ones, friends and family may find some peace in this horrendous tragedy.

Here is what I think happened:

A.  The plane was either hit with catastrophic "clear air turbulence" or a bomb from a terrorist.  Both of these scenarios would be enough to break the plane apart or break a part off of the plane.  It would be enough to knock out all the backup electrical and mechanical pieces in place, that normally help sustain the plane in the air long enough for the pilots to keep control of it and bring the plane and its passengers safely to land.  Both scenarios could be catastrophic enough to instantly not allow the pilots to radio for help and to shut down the transponder, ending any chance of telling others via radar where the plane or pieces of the plane were headed.

B. The initial clues of the flight path are shown in the video below...You can see where the plane is headed in a north easterly direction, before radar communication eerily ends.  I watched the video online, which was shot onto a mobile phone, and at the end, the plane looks like it turns slightly to the right....my guess is it was the first hint of stronger crosswind...If you watch the video, it looks like it is not moving forward as fast as before....like it is struggling against a severe crosswind...immediately after, it drops off radar for good.

Below is a real example of a major crosswind landing with extreme turbulence from a storm.  My guess is that the Malaysian Flight 370 pilots tried to compensate for the sudden clear air turbulence, and maybe tried to fly in a similar fashion, before part of the fuselage, wing or tail broke off (this plane had a tip broken in an on ground accident earlier, obviously repaired, but maybe structurally weakened).

C.  Malaysian military released information that something was picked up heading almost in a u-turn from where the plane was last radar recorded.  My guess, and yeah, this is a single wild-assed guess (no better or worse than any of the guesses from armchair aviation experts) is that an extreme jet stream, the "clear air turbulence" mentioned above, after catastrophically marring the plane, carried a piece of the plane 200 kilometers, about 125 miles, in the direction of the raging jet stream before it fell innocently into the waters of the Mallaca Straights.Less than a year ago, in May 2013, Singapore Airlines hit some similar clear air turbulence in  close vicinity to the Malaysia 370 flight but was heading northwest.  My guess is that the topography  of Vietnam and the surrounding land mass causes some very infrequent, but rolling and unpredictably fast moving jet streams...and in this case maybe enough to wallop the Malaysian plane, and wound its structural integrity enough so that its flight was unrecoverable.

Read the below article, published today. It tries to explains the confusion around the supposed mid-air turnaround...at this point, no one has thought it could be a piece of the plane drifting like a feather in a raging jetstream from around 35,000 ft...they only surmise that it may have been the entire plane intact... (Click Here)

If you're an aviation expert, please let me know:

• What was the direction of the wind prior to the plane going off radar?  Was it a southwest wind for the northerly heading plane?
• How large or small of an object can radar detect, or can it only detect mainly motion of a moving object and not size?
• Is it possible that a piece of the plane detected by military or civilian radar was confused for the entire plane in motion? 
• Is it possible that a large piece of the plane, broken off around 35, 000 feet by major jet stream turbulence (or terrorist bomb), could be swept approx. 125 miles in the air in the direction of the ongoing major side-air stream (southwest)?

I'd love to hear what anyone thinks about my Malaysia Flight 370 theory...Hey, I could be wrong, but if I am, I'm just an inventor!!

3/16/2014 - Update

Four more days have passed now and it seems there are so many conflicting theories and information being released that they are no closer to figuring out what happened to the jet and its passangers than the first 24 hours after it disappeared.

I think the disaster and aviation investigators should work on the information they know about the plane and the last bits of information they have on it..  they have information that the Boeing jet climbed to 45,000 feet, an unapproved altitude...Instead of thinking that the pilot commandeered this, why don't they think about the physics involved that may have made the plane gain altitude possibly on its own...I heard one expert say that a jet on autopilot that was losing fuel would eventually gain altitude....so maybe a piece of the plane came off from a structural weakness due to some catastrophic 'clear air turbulence'...and the plane rose on autopilot to the insurmountable height, before being unable to climb any higher and then barrelling down to the next recorded altitude of 23,000 feet....and eventually crashing into the South China Sea.

Another clue that is being dismissed, is that there was some recorded seismic activity on the ocean floor near when the plane was last recorded and around the same time...Some expert said they didn't think it could be due to the plane crashing there.  If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and sounds like a duck ...maybe it is a duck!

I think all the transponder information should be discounted, at least for now...Maybe a catastrophic event caused them to put out false information somehow.  Does anyone truly believe the jet was hijacked or commandeered by a pilot(s) set on suicide, then flew the plane to unsafe heights, before settling back down to 23,000 feet and somewhere after making an extreme westward flight path, flying to low levels where it couldn't be detected by other radar before flying 5 to 7 more hours to some remote country, island or even Kalamazoo?

When a child goes missing, investigators always search the general area and an extended perimeter in the hopes of finding them...they don't put an all points bulletin to every city in the United States....So, the crash investigators should still look in the ocean area where the plane last had contact!  It is possible the plane extremely disintegrated in the air or went into the ocean depths while leaving undetectable traces of debris on the buoyant waters above!

My last two cents on this:  Use the submersible technology we currently have in the U.S to troll the South China sea looking for sonar images of bunches of objects or strange ocean shapes to possibly solve this this nearly 10 day aviation mystery...if not, this may be a two year or decade long one...Godspeed to all the passengers for the most timely determination for their family, friends and loved ones!

Editors note:  I don't usually make posts about current events that are not related to inventing in some manner, this one is way outside my normal blog zone...It does involve in place technologies used for tracking and flying jets safely...I've just felt the need to vent my theories...in hopes that this story will come to some resolution for all.