Mystery: IT manager Mike Seberger found this image by surfing satellite images on the internet
IT manager Mike Seberger said he may have detected the missing Malaysian Airlines plane on a high-resolution satellite photo
IT manager Mike Seberger said he may have detected the missing Malaysian Airlines plane on a high-resolution satellite photo
One of the millions of people gripped by the mystery of flight MH370 may have tracked down the missing jet... simply by surfing the internet.
IT manager Mike Seberger said he may have detected the missing Malaysian Airlines plane on a high-resolution satellite photo taken above the seas where it went missing.
The image he spotted shows a plane-shaped object under a bank of white cloud in the Gulf of Thailand, an arm of the South China Sea.
42 ships and 39 aircraft from 12 different countries have been drafted in to search for the missing Boeing 777 and the 239 passengers - with no success.
But if Mr Seberger’s hunch is correct, he will have solved a mystery that has fascinated the world and baffled experts - all from the comfort of his home.
Mr Seberger, 47, from Chicago, United States, found the mystery object after logging on to the Tomnod website, which uploaded the satellite images of 1,000 square miles the day after the plane disappeared.
Around half a million volunteers signed up for the online mission on the first day and up to 100,000 people a minute have been using the website. The interest has been so high that the site has frequently crashed through too much traffic.
The site works by allocating each viewer a tiny square of the search area.
The viewer then scrutinises that image in detail - a technique known as ‘crowd searching’.
The satellite photos were taken 400 miles above the earth on March 9 and can capture a detail as small as a penalty spot on a football field.
If viewers see something of interest, they flag up the detail to the website managers.
Mr Seberger said it took him only a few minutes to find the image, whose dimensions are said to be consistent with a Boeing 777.
Last night Mr Seberger said: “At first I skipped past it, thinking, ‘Nah. No way I would find anything that quickly.
“But then I kept scrolling back to it and thinking to myself, ‘It does resemble a plane.’”
The intrigue came as the search was widened to waters off both sides of the peninsula following possible sightings of the plane from at least nine witnesses.
One was from a New Zealander on a rig off Vung Tau in southern Vietnam. He sent an email saying he had seen a “burning object” about 200 miles out to sea.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-manager-3235818
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