the old school seniors. we'll see what happens. we will all be watching tonight, to see if you guys are right. i know a few people out there with brackets who will be watching as well. that is it for us here at at&t stadium, i'm rachel nichols. enjoy the games. hello, everyone. welcome to the "cnn newsroom." i'm fredricka whitfield following breaking news today. what could be a major break in the search for missing flight 370. china's state news agency reports that a chinese patrol ship detected a pulse signal with the same frequency as a black box in the southern indian ocean. the senate reportedly lasted for about a minute and 30 seconds today and according to a chinese newspaper, the ship also heard the signal on friday, but the signal stopped too abruptly to be recorded. today the joint agency coordination center's chief said that he had been notified about the signal, but there's no confirmation yet that it is

connected to the missing plane. officials also say a chinese air force plane spotted several floating white objects earlier today. it's not clear yet if those are connected to the plane either. and now the task is finding out if any of these new, potential clues are indeed linked to the plane's disappearance. we have our teams around the world digging into every angle. will ripley is live for us in perth, australia, and rene marsh live in washington, d.c. so, will, let me begin with you. what's the latest on the search efforts, trying to confirm these reported sightings and detections? >> well, yeah. 3:00 a.m. here in perth and we know that search effort, the aerial search effort, will be ramping up here at peairs pearc base. we don't know will the planes go to new area, outside the designated search zone when the chinese ship supposedly detected

some sort of a ping. big question, we don't know why they were looking in this particular place. one question we're hoemping to get answered from the chinese officials in beijing. the problem is, the information stream has been slow. according to a source of ours in the australian defense force, the australian command center got word there was a possible ping detected. they got word around lunchtime on saturday. by the early evening on saturday, when the chinese state news agency put out a news bulletin to the world, it took the australian officials by surprise, because they had been trying to get more information, information they just weren't able to get. we know from our source at the australian command center, they were trying to establish a link with the chinese ship for more specific details about this supposed ping, but still, now hours later, they haven't been able to establish a link. all the information is having to go through beijing and the information from beijing has been limited at best. we have reached out to the chinese government to try to get a response, and so far we

haven't heard back either, fred. >> hmm. and so, will, what about the sequence of events? i mean, we're only hours away now from baybreak. do you know anything about the plan, what planes will get in the air? whether ships will be redirected? are authorities giving you kind of any indication? >> in a statement from angus houston overseeing the joint coordinated effort here, he said that the royal australian air force is on standby to possibly be deployed over this new area where this ping was possibly detected. but no definitive answers as to when or if it will actually happen. that was as of the last update. when we get another update, perhaps a decision will have been made, but this is the decision we have right now and haven't heard anything about ships being re-routed just yet. we just don't have those answers and i suspect it's because we just don't have all of the details we need to get from the chinese government about the specifics on this. >> all right. will ripley, thank you so much. so rene marsh in washington,

this chinese claim raising a lot of key questions. for one, could this really be an indicator of the black box? >> right. so fred, like you said, along with the developments come a lot of these key questions. so could it be? well, the manufacturer of the pingers today did tell us that this frequency is so very unique. there's not many things that this could be, but now, behind that is this chinese television reporting that the signal was detected every second for 1:30 seconds. that's the part that makes us scratch our heads a bit, because the manufacturer says if these pingers are working, they're constantly pinging. possible explanation for why this sound was only detected for that short period of time? well, perhaps the ship was moving away, or it could also be that the signal was disrupted by silt or debris. also, there are two beacons. one is attached to the cockpit voice recorder, the other attached to the data recorder.

however, we're only hearing a report of one ping. we know that the two beacons ping independently and not at the same time. it could be that only one pinger is working. or both are working but one is many miles away. all of that said, also, fred, it's possible that this is a false positive. we heard one expert saying, gallo, saying earlier today that air france 447, their equipment had a false positive. we know that hms echo, the british ship, this week they also reported a false positive. so to go back to your original question, could this really be the black boxes? it's really hard to say at this point, fred. >> hmm. and so since debris also was reportedly spotted by perhaps a chinese air ship, should that make searchers more confident that this could be flight 370? >> well, we know that the debris was spotted roughly 55 miles

away from where this sound was detected's it was described as white objects, but when you think about this, this debris was spotted in an area where potentially this sound was heard. or very close to it. we're looking at it there. doesn't necessarily make us more confident that the pinging is coming from the plane or this is even debris from the plane, because when you think about it, the black box usually that's going to be one of the heavier items that will sink down to the ground right away. so that's usually going to be around the vicinity of perhaps where this plane went down. if that is the case, you would think with all the wave action that we've been talking about and the erratic currents, that the debris from the plane wouldn't necessarily be in that area one month later. so -- is it debris from the plane or is it just more junk? it's kind of hard to say, because, you know, with all the wave action we've been talking about that one is hard to

believe. >> go ahead. >> well, i know we have this map here, and i think we have it ready. the ememmersat data, we were ab to draw that arc in the southern part of the south indian ocean where the plane may have been. it is interesting to see where that arc is in relation to where this new area is, where they detected the sound, and it's pretty close. we may not have it ready yet, but when you look at how close it is that is pretty interesting to see, fred. >> and now what could potentially happen next? >> well, let's just say this is it. this is the moment that they've, all of these search crews have been waiting for. detecting this ping from the black boxes. what they would need to do is locate that pinging sound again. once they locate the pinging sound, they'd go ahead and deploy ocean mapping equipment to actually find the black box. that's what would be next. i'm not really sure what kind of equipment is onboard the chinese ship, but we do know that the

australian ship "the ocean shield" has that sort of underwater robot, able to go down on the ocean floor and actually find that black box. fred? >> hmm. okay. all right. rene, thank you so much. so many questions still surrounding this latest reported sighting. well, let's get to our panel now to talk more about this. rob mccallum, cnn analyst and ocean search specialist and vice president at williamson and associates. cnn aviation analyst and les and richard quest, cnn aviation correspondent and cnn aviation analyst mary schiavo, also a former inspector general for the u.s. department of transportation and now an aviation attorney who represents families suing airlines in crashes and disasters. so, richard, to you first. the optimist wants to know what would happen next, if, indeed, this pulse is an indicator that the black box, one of easy that two black boxes, is nearby, but still there has to be

verification whether that pulse really did happen. australian authorities are at least acknowledging that they have this information, that they've learned of characteristics that seem to be -- seem to identify with a pulse, but still, no real confirmation. we're a couple of hours away from daybreak. what do you expect the australian authorities can do, ought to do, would do at this juncture, in terms of a commit? >> no dwhut they'll do. they will look at what they've got. they will get as much information as is possible from the chinese, and they will make a very quick judgment whether or not it is worth retanking the assets, the ships, the planes, to go and have a look. now, sure, you can send the planes over to see those white pieces of debris, and to see if there's any debris where the ship said it heard the pinging noise, and that's relatively straightforward. if i was a guessing man, i would

say that's almost a certainty tomorrow, unless the chinese say otherwise. and then they will start thinking of moving more shippers into the area. they will see how far ocean shield is, have ocean shield get there in a reasonable time. what about the british submarine, can that get there? but they won't do any of that until it is believed there is a reason to do it, and so far, one second pings for a minute and a half on a friday and a saturday, when they haven't seen the data, probably is causing them to scratch their heads and think, let's wait and see. >> and, rob, do you see that there might be any movement before there would be some real confirmation or verification, just for the sake of time? >> no, i don't. you know, i think richard's absolutely correct. that, you know, this is very sketchy information at this stage. it's unconfirmed. it doesn't actually ring true in terms of the technical side of things. >> what do you mean? >> well, it's -- it's a one and

a half second or a one and a half minute recording. you know, the frequency that the pingers operate on is selected because that's the quiet zone in the spectrum of ocean noise, and so it's not only aircraft pingers that operate on this frequency. all manner of science equipment, fishing equipment, survey equipment, operates on this frequency. so was it just a short blip from the pingers? or was it somebody that was firing up a little bit of equipment, or testing, ranging some equipment, and that was picked up by mistake. as we've heard, there's been a couple of instances already of false positives. so we need more information in order to verify before we act. >> so, mary, wouldn't it seem that a lot of time has been lost by not moving assets, even while they try to get confirmation or verification? because if initial reports are that somewhere between 10 and

1278 ho 12 hours prior to this juncture, discussing it, i guess chinese authorities made everyone aware of it, australian authorities learned of it, 10 or 12 hours lost now. why wouldn't they just move the assets as they tried to get verification? >> well, what you said is right, plus now we learned that they had actually heard it the day before, too, so now we have a day and a half potentially almost two days lost, and i think what they will do, i mean, richard's probably right, but i think what they will do is try to get confirmation from the chinese ship. they've been trying to reach them. they haven't been able to reach them, but once they reach them and say, look, did you hear this on friday and saturday? and i think they will send assets. i don't think they have a choice. as they said, they were using educated hypotheses to search as it was. i don't like to use the term "guess," but this is as good as what they've had so far. so i do think that they will send the ships and i think they have to, because a ping repeated

on two different days is about the best they have so far. so i think they'll go. >> and les? >> yeah. i mean, this is conjecture on my part to to expand on what mary and richard were saying, i would think they would go back, confirm some of the data that's been computed and assumptions made, and just make sure, like you mentioned earlier, that arc that will bring up at some point in time indeed may possibly intersect where that impact area could have been. >> all right. les, rob, richard and mary, thank you so much. stick around. we do have much more to come as it pertains to these two reports. chinese news agencies saying that they have a reason to believe that black boxes or at least debris may be in the general vicinity. still awaiting confirmation from australian authorities. and we're now only a few hours away from a new search day in the indian ocean. we'll have much more of that straight ahead.

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welcome back. the latest on the search for flight 370. we're waiting to find out more information about that pulse signal reportedly picked up by chinese patrol ship. david gallo joins me by phone from boston, the director of special projects at the woods hole oceanographic institution. all right. so, david, are you optimistic about this report? >> hi, fred. well, i'm as optimistic as can be, given the circumstances's. it's a sit and wait until we hear more, but it sounds right. so then i'll you know, we're going to be more or less on pins and needles. >> what sounds right about it, to you? that in this -- this pulse was heard for about a minute and a

half and that apparently it has a pulse signal of 37.5 a kilohertz, what is -- what's encouraging to you about this information? >> well, that's encouraging, because that's the secret number for the frequency for the black box pingers, and the rep rate was about right, meaning it makes that noise about every second. the idea it was only heard a short bit, i kind of get that the water depth of that area goes from shallower than 2,000 meters, less than a mile and a half, to greater than 5,000 meters which is about three miles. depending on where it is inside there, i could see that the signal could come and go, depending where they are with the boat. so there's nothing, you know, that's like out of place. it's just waiting to make sure that that's really what was heard yesterday. or today. >> your feeling, there are a lot of potential obstructions down below, that if indeed this was

the pulse, any number of things that could cut off that signal after a minute and a half? >> absolutely. it's like getting a station on a radio, in a car, driving along. you got the station. sounds great. you go another 50 feet and it fades out. then comes back again. if you keep trying to fiddle with the tuning knob, trying to get that big one just right. there's a lot of stuff. there's thermal, thermal layers in the water. there's water that's denser and saucier and thz mountains, valleys, all of that stuff can do that to sound. >> so if the australian navy's open shield, or perhaps even the british ship "echo" which all have that sophisticated listening equipment onboard, if it were to be directed in that same general vicinity where the chinese ship was, what would it take for them to try and locate that sound? is it as simple as somesophisticated mapping of the chinese ship, that had may have

done? dropping of an anchor where they would have heard that site? how do they get others to duplicate that path? >> a great question. it matters how the chinese located -- we're giving a haven't gender location, 1010 degree 1010 -- 101 degrees west. 257 degrees south, something like that. and you know, i don't know if they dropped a, if they got that through gps. it's one thing to know where the surface ship is nap they were towing some sort of listening device, you've got to know where that is and that could easily be a mile or more away from the surface ship. depends where they were and if that's what's going to happen, you have to listen in and eventually look. >> so if not by way of other assets in that general vicinity, how else would this chinese ship try to verify what they heard?

i mean, how do they convince australian authorities or anybody else that we are very much convinced that what we sheared a pulse from the black box? >> sure. one thing they can do, at least i hope, they recorded what they heard previously. start by handing that over, so other people can analyze it and have a look at it. the second part is going to be up to the joint command in australia right now and i'm i saming they're playing under those guidelines. there's probably a mechanism set up where if you see something, hear something, how you then pass it up the system. it doesn't seem to be what happened so far. it seemed like it came out of the media first. the chinese media when we first heard about this. so we'll have to sit back and watch how it's handled from here on in. >> david gallo, thanks so much. much more on these reported sightings and audio hearing

coming from the chinese ship, and that it saw debris not far from the location of that post, and also reaction from many of the relatives of the passengers on flight 370. many of them expressing skepticism. gunderman group is a go. yes! not just a start up. an upstart. gotta get going. gotta be good. good? good. growth is the goal. how do we do that? i talked to ups. they'll help us out. new technology. smart advice. we focus on the business and they take care of the logistics. ups? good going. we get good. that's great. great. great. great. great. great. great. great. great. (all) great! i love logistics. the was a truly amazing day. without angie's list, i don't know if we could have found all the services we needed for our riley. for over 18 years we've helped people take care of the things that matter most. join today at angieslist.com

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news that a chinese ship may have heard several pings in the indian ocean is drawing reaction from relatives of passengers on flight 370. joe joins joins us now from kuala lumpur. this news came in the middle of the night for some folks but what kind of reaction are you getting? >> you're absolutely right. just after 3:00 a.m. right here in kuala lumpur, fred. very little reaction, frankly, from the families of the passengers. they've been through it before. a ray of hope searchers may have found something, so far all of the other hopeful signs have faded away after time. the sparse amount of reaction we've gotten is from people who say they frankly do not know what to think at this stage. a chinese family member here said to cnn, there is no confirmation, he said, and we are all simply waiting patiently. now, the government, which, by the way, held a briefing a

couple hours before the news came out, this new news, that issued a statement actually on twitter suggesting now is the time to pray and hope, but honestly, this is only the beginning and we are still looking for the first confirmation of anything. it's clear, fred, the authorities are treating this with a great deal of caution. >> and, joe, you know, i understand it's very late there, but i wonder if malaysian authorities, if anyone expressed their disappointment that the chinese, you know, didn't report this information to them directly, so that they could, then, involve the australian authorities? apparently that's usually how the sequence of events would go, but instead the chinese handled it on their own and publicized it on its own through its government news agencies? >> right. i have to tell you, there is some question about the timeline there, and whether there was a little bit of conversation below the table about the fact that these potential pings had been

located, but wasn't disseminated to the news media. there was that briefing that happened a couple hours before niz news came out's we know the first alert had come much earlier in the day. it's simply possible that the authorities had some hint of this, but didn't tell it out of an abundance of caution. we'd like to get to them and ask. >> lots of confusion still. thank you so much, joe johns, appreciate that from kuala lumpur. lots more questions and panel to come up addressing some of the questions that might be on your mind as well. how will chinese authorities cooperate with malaysian authorities and australian authorities, now that you do have a multi-national task force at hand? all that straight ahead, right after this. pixley a small community located in the sen tall part of

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all right. it's been a full day of news suspicions that could potentially turn out to be big developments in the search for flight 370. china's state news agency

earlier says a chinese ship detected a pulse with the same signal as a black box would have and it lasted about 90 seconds, but there's no confirmation that it has anything to do with this missing plane. a chinese air force search plane also reportedly spotted some white objects floating 56 miles from where that pulse was detected. cnn international's jim chance hey been reporting from kuala lumpur from day one and has a timeline of the twists and turns of are this worldwide mystery. >> reporter: the story of flight 370 began at the arrival gate at beijing, listed delayed some six hours after it disappeared over the south china sea. >> and we have breaking news right now. malaysia airlines confirms it lost contact with a plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members. flight mh-370 headed from beijing to kuala lumpur expected

to land at 6:30 a.m. local time. now it's almost 9:00 in the morning in beijing right now meaning that plane is 2.5 hours late. >> reporter: the confusion, concern and fear at that hour completely predictable. everyone dreaded the worst. a terrible accident. >> -- confirm that this flight mh-370 lost contact with air traffic control at 2:40 a.m. this morning. >> most people at initial stage thought it was a straightforward crash and come down somewhere south of vietnam and the wreckage would be found very, very quickly. so a lot of people took a hands-on approach. >> reporter: malaysia waited to review details of its own military radar, the plane deliberately reversed course, flying back over the melee peninsula over a heading towards the indian ocean. >> how much of a turnback it made, 20 kilometers?

10? >> we are still looking at that. >> reporter: suddenly, anything became possible. wild and intricate internet fieris fed fears of a terror plot led by two young iranians who boarded with stolen passports. the only problem, they weren't terrorists. just trying to begin new lives in europe. suspicions soon shifted to the only people capable of flying the boeing 777, the pilots. captain zaharie shah some suspected practiced the stealthy turns and changes in altitude on his om flight simulator, but investigation turned up nothing. no claim of responsibility. no known ties to terror groups among passengers or crew. no motive supported by evidence. intricate analysis of satellite handshakes took the search to an area where it likely ran out of fuel. with the plane, all evidence of what really happened on its flight data recorders.

>> we cannot be certain about the success in the search for mh-370, but we can be certain that we will spare no effort that we will not rest until we have done everything we humanly can. >> reporter: who steered the plane off course? and why? what happened inside the cockpit? where did the aircraft go down and when will we find a trace? there's an abundance of theories colliding with about absence of evidence. after four weeks here, like everyone else, i have only questions, and no answers. jim clancy, cnn, quality kuala >> let's bring back our panel. rob, you first. it is unchartered territory. so does it appear as though these were unavoidable mistakes that have illicelicited a lot o questions, or simply this is

what comes with the territory of a calamity of this scale? >> oh, i think this is what comes with the territory. i mean, this is unprecedented by any measure, and so there's no playbook. there's no -- there's never been something that somebody else can refer to in terms of experience, or lessons learned from past events. so it's caught everybody off guard. >> i wonder, mary, if there's anything at this juncture that the chinese authorities can do to really kind of cement their argument that, of what was reported today by the chinese news agency that indeed its ship heard this pulse, and that, indeed, one of its aircraft spotted debris? what can they say at this juncture to kind of cement that argument to show that what it saw and witnessed it true? >> right. well, first off they need to start by telling the australian

joint task force why they were looking in that particular area. they must have some indication, some clue, you know. it's good to be lucky, but, you know, i can't believe they just picked that site by luck. so they need to give them their reasoning, their evidence, their coordinates and data to explain why they were looking in that area and, two, respond to the joint task force trying to reach the ship and say, this is what we found. these are the exact coordinates where we found it and what we've heard. i understand they couldn't record it on one of the days. it was too short of a pinging noise, but they need to come forward with what they have so that the joint task force can support them, but why they were there is a real mystery. >> i wonder, les, if that could be expected, that they would come forward to share what they have, given they didn't share at the very beginning. instead, they reported it but didn't necessarily share it with other authorities investigating this missing aircraft?

>> well, therein lies, or begs the question. why? and it may be they were xm actually, we may be be privy to the information, but maybe they were assigned of being in that particular area. we all know this whole investigation had its pitfalls and this thing was an overwhelming situation. it is unprecedented, and accident of any measure is unprecedented, and overworming, and had they asked for expertise outside of the malaysian government, maybe this would have proceeded a little quicker ng . >> and i wonder, rob if maybe they didn't realize it would be as complicated a search as it turned out to be and malaysian authorities thought they would be able to handle it, not knowing how -- how large of a scale this search would be? >> i mean, no one could have predicted this, because it's unprecedented. i mean, you know, to take an

airliner so far off course in what appears to be a premeditated way, to a place which is one of the most remote spots on the surface of the ocean, i mean, how do you -- how do you prepare for that? so we'll only know once those black boxes are recovered and perhaps some significant pieces of wreckage can be analyzed. >> mary, do you have an opinion as to whether this plane, any wreckage, could ever be located, if this pulse is never to be redetected again? if there's no debris in which to, you know, uncover or collect? there's no way a full-scale survey of the entire indian ocean can take place. is it your feeling that after this weekend, it will be happenstance that any wreckage would ever be located? >> well, most likely, but for these, this location where these two sets of pings were heard, friday and saturday, even if the

pings should stop, you know, if the batteries are dying, and they're about to die out, we do have the coordinates. they have the latitude and longitude of where this was, and i think at this point giving these soundings, gish given thay have this information, they can use side scale sonar and other methods and will certainly map the ocean floor, at least in this area. so they is have this to go on. if these pings turn out to be nothing, and i imagine that the search will go on another 10 or 15 days because the batteries theoretically could last that long. it's not that they automatically stop in 30 days. after that, regrouping, maybe refinement of the satellite data and maybe they hope just to get lucky. that's sometimes the best you can hope for if all of your other leads have dried up. but they aren't in any way, shape or form ready to pack up and go home yet. i think it will go on for yet

another fair amount of time. >> at least a couple more weeks, in your vur view. >> oh, yes. and chad myers will help us understand the difficulty in mapping the floor of the indian ocean, when we come back. [ male announcer ] hey, look at you! you're an emailing, texting, master of the digital universe. but do you protect yourself? ♪ apparently not. when you access everything, you give everyone access to everything about you. but that's ok. while you do your thing... [ alert rings ] we'll be here at lifelock, doing our thing. watching out for things your credit card alone can't. [ alert rings ] and relentlessly protecting your identity. get lifelock protection and live life free. [ alert rings ] how much money do you think you'll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old.

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welcome back. four weeks into the certainly for flight 370 and another report of a floating debris in

the southern indian ocean, and china's state news agency is reporting a ship detect add possible pulse signal with the same frequency as a black box. but as cnn's chad myers explains, the indians ocean is such a remote area, that there's no easy map to follow. >> reporter: you know, many people have asked, how could we not have the entire ocean mapped? let me give you a little sublime idea how difficult that would be. we have a ship. it's pinging. seeing the beam width down at the bottom of the ocean, about five miles wide. the ship is moving 5 miles per hour mapping a big, long stripe. think about a lawn mower going in one direction. turn and do the other direction back and forth and back and forth. the earth's ocean of 130 million square miles. you can only do 25 square miles an hour. i did the math. if yutd never go for you'll, you'd never get new crew members, it would take one ship 593 years to map the ocean.

a little bit sublime when you think how much potential is here at 130 million jemiles. so much to map of the ocean floor. what do we know about this area? up in here where the search area is now, every line you see is about a five-mile line strip some shape gone this way and mapped and that way and mapped and this way and mapped, but look at all the blue areas that have nothing. not one ship has ever gone through those areas right through there. compare that to the united states and thanks to noaa and a lot of shipping around our area, the entire east coast completely mapped up and down the west coast completely mapped. you get farther out, obviously more sparse, still, a much better idea of our area here than, of course, that indian ocean which is so remote. >> very complex region. thank you so much, chad myers. appreciate that. when we come back, we'll have our expert panel with us. what happens tomorrow? in just a matter of hours, when

the search resumes at daylight. >> reporter: for schuyler ebersol, high school started pretty normally, but his luck quickly took a turn for the worse. >> i would have sometimes difficulty breathing. i'd have severe dizziness so that i couldn't really walk or see straight. for days at a time. i would faint randomly and go to sleep some nights and not sure if i'd wake up in the morning. >> reporter: at first he chocked it up to stress but then realized something was really wrong. >> no one knew what was wrong with knee. >> reporter: home from school for months at a time, away from his friends and world and very sick, ebersol desperately needed an escape, and he found it, in writing. >> i just started writing, and i would get lost in this world, and identified with this character. it was a way to keep me going

while everything else in my life wasn't so great. >> reporter: then after several months doctors discovered the cause of his symptoms. a rare form of lyme disease. at the same time his scattered >> the book is called a hidden world. it's about a main character who has a heart attack, he slips into a coma, and when he wakes up he turns into a wolf in the hospital room. >> reporter: sound familiar? >> i didn't intend for there to be a lot of me in the main character nate williams but it sort of happened that way. >> reporter: "the hidden world" was published last december and ebersol said through it all, writing saved his life. >> you really just have to find something that can sustain you and keep you mentally strong. for me it was writing and then the quest to get published. >> reporter: dr. sanjay gupta, cnn, reporting.

welcome back. the search for flight 370 begins again in just a few hours. our panel is back with us. rob mccollum, les abend, and mary schiavo.

mary, to you first, what should happen next in this search especially given today's reports from the chinese news agency of a pulse or even sightings. >> well, i think the chinese ship that found the pulses on two different days needs to get right back to the location where they found it and try to replicate that. but in the meantime, communicate with the joint task force and provide them the information they need to know as the task force has indicated they've been trying to reach the ship and get coordinated with them so they can, first, hopefully replicate the signal and then, second, get the rest of the support they need out there to confirm it and get the ocean shield headed there if the signals can be confirmed and then from then on out coordinate. >> and, rob, what do you want to see happen in a matter of hours? >> i think mary is quite correct. i heard it -- they're saying twice. we need to hear it again.

so i'm hoping that the ship that heard it is running patterns to try and go back over that site again, but it may also be time to launch sonar buoys to bracket the area to see if we can hear anything further. it's a question of if this is the pinger, this is pay dirt. this is the jackpot. >> and les? >> what i'd like to see is in this day and age of tremendous communication among everybody, that this communication is provided through the chinese government directly to the task force. >> all right. les, mary, rob, thanks to all of you. we appreciate it. we'll be back with more of this mystery surrounding malaysian 370. gunderman group. gunderman group is growing. getting in a groove. growth is gratifying. goal is to grow. gotta get greater growth. growth? growth. i just talked to ups. they've got a lot of great ideas.

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we'll find out tonight. the action gets started at 6:09 eastern on tbs with florida and uconn followed by kentucky taking on wisconsin. both games airing on cnn's sister network of tbs and the "newsroom" continues right after this. [ male announcer ] it's here -- xfinity watchathon week,

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the indian ocean near the arc where authorities believe the plane have gone down. it could lead teams to the airliner's black boxes or it could be nothing. the same ship picked up a signal friday but lost it before it could be recorded. this is a race against the clock. the batteries for those flight data recorders could run out in a matter of hours, and there was a worry the batteries might already be inoperative, but malaysia airlines ceo says they weren't due to be replaced until june. teams also are trying to track down some white objects spotted about 56 miles from the pulse signal. we don't know if they are from the plane, the doomed flight either, and we could get some answers in a couple of hours when the aerial search resumes at daylight. let's talk about all of this and these new developments with the president of duquesne c-com, the

company that delivered the original flight data recorders. let's assume that the chinese ship actually did hear something, and you have told us that the black box pings happened at a unique frequency. are you confident these pings couldn't be confused for a different kind of sound like perhaps a military sonar or maybe even a fishing vessel? >> well, good question, and i think that's where the 37.5 killy herkil kilohertz verification, that it was that frequency, a critical. it was designed to be different from all the other ambient background noise in the ocean, so it should stand out just like they claim it did. >> and that sound anish comes from a beacon similar to this. we have a flight data recorder on our desk. this is a beacon or company may have manufactured whether it was for this 777 or others, should we be listening for two pingers,

not just necessarily one, since both flight recorders are equipped with pingers? >> they're both -- both recorders are equipped with a unique pinger but the pinger is on the same frequency, so the 37.5 kilohertz is identical to both pingers. if you hear one and the other one is adjacent or nearby, you're going to hear a second ping. it won't be synchronized. the units don't talk to each other, so you will hear two independent pings at that same frequency and same pulse rate. >> and according to the reporting, the chinese are saying the sound they heard was not continuous but lasted maybe for about a minute and a half. is that a viable description of how a pinger just might work? does that sound, you know, like a pinger with perhaps a dying battery? >> well, it's hard to say. we've not duplicated a situation like that in the lab where it would stay on and then turn off and then stay on. typically it's continuous, and

as the battery dies, it would just decrease in the sound output, the sound power output, not necessarily become discontinuous like that. so it's not typical, so that makes it unique and something we need to study. anish patel, thanks so much. stay with us. stay on the line because we want to talk to you more about today's headline and you're also going to be joining our expert panel coming up. but first the sun rises in western australia in just a matter of a couple of hours, and the aerial search will begin again over the indian ocean. i want to bring in matthew chance now with the latest from perth, australia. so, matthew, what's our understanding as to what will happen come day break? >> reporter: well, it's pretty unclear at the moment. what we understand from the australians who are leading the search effort, the international search effort here, is that they've been trying over the past several hours to be in contact with the chinese vessel that detected this pulse coming from this area which apparently

was outside of the designated search zone, but they've been unable to do so to get any further details of what exactly they found. and so that's something that they're waiting to hear from. they've been in contact with the chinese capital, with beijing, to see if they can get any additional information as well. at the moment what the international sort of coordination effort here is saying is that they're considering sending assets, airplanes, in fact, to the area to follow up on what the chinese have detected, but at the moment they haven't made that decision to do that. they'll be coming in early in the morning and making that decision. at the same time the australian led mission saying they're aware of what the chinese have detected, saying it is consist wept a black box flight recorder and they're aware of that second incidence as well, which we shouldn't forget about, chinese airplane spotting what they say are white objects relatively close to where they detected those pulses as well, about 60 miles away, in fact.

again, neither of these issues, neither the pulses or the objects at this point have been confirmed as being related to that missing malaysian airliner, fred. >> matthew, earlier it was reported there was a communication problem between chinese authorities and australian authorities. is that still a problem, those two countries connecting and sharing information? >> reporter: well, it's a problem in the sense that the chinese aren't operating in the same way as the other seven countries that are engaged in this international search mission in the sense of this. you know, everyone else when they see something, when they find something, they relate that information back to the sort of central coordination center here. the chinese don't do that. they relate it back to their capital in beijing and then beijing decides what to relay to the australians, and so that's led to a source -- that's a source of confusion, potentially a source of friction as well. >> matthew chance, thanks so much, in perth, australia. so is the ping that the chinese claim to have heard today

actually from flight 370? we're bringing in our team of aviation analysts right after this quick break. ♪ oh-oh, oh, oh, la, la-la, la-la, la-la ♪ ♪ na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na some things just go together, like auto and home insurance. bundle them together at progressive, and you save big on both. ♪ oh, oh-oh, oh, oh hey, it's me! [ whistles ] and there's my dog! [gasps] there's my steps! i should stop talking. perfectly paired savings. now, that's progressive.

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ask your doctor about non-insulin victoza. it's covered by most health plans. a possible break-through today in the search for flight 370. a chinese ship discovers a pulse signal coming across the same frequency used by so-called black boxes. joining me now to discuss, anish patel, president of pinger manufacturer duquesne seacom, miles o'brien, and rob mccollum. good to see all of you. rob, to you first, how confident are you that this signal is, indeed, an indicator of one of the black boxes? >> well, it's intriguing. you know, we don't have a lot of information as yet because the information we do have is not being confirmed, but if we take it at face value, it's a very

positive sign and it could be the jackpot. >> and miles, there is a lot of ship traffic in the southern portion of the indian ocean, so could this signal be coming from something else? >> i'm not an expert on underwater searching on all this, but i do know that the type of signal that they are reporting would lead you to believe that it is, in fact, the pinger for one of the black boxes. what's interesting to me is how they got to this location, what sorts of assets did the chinese use to get to this location they may not be sharing with everybody. i doubt this was just a lucky shot in the dark. >> and the why, of course, because no one is clear on why they would be in that particular vicinity when it's about 100 miles off course from the concentrated search area. so, anish, the chinese ship actually detected the signal two separate times we understand, once on friday and then again today, saturday. does that tell you anything? does that, i guess, lend more credence to, you know, what they

heard? >> well, i'd like to think so. the longer and the more often they hear the signal, again, it's designed to be a continuous signal, the longer and more often they hear it, the better. >> and so, rob, how might the depth of the ocean, the locality of where they believe they heard this pulse, how does that impact a signal? >> the signal can be impacted by obviously by distance because it does have a limited range. it was designed as a short-range tool, but also by the different thermoclimes and thermolayers in the ocean. >> anish, give us an idea of the resiliency of the pulse in those kind of conditions whether it may be because there might be debris in the water, whether there be silt in the water. how do those things impact the audioability of this pulse? >> the pulse is designed typically to travel about 2, 2.5

nautical miles. a lot of things can impact that. the thermal degradation, the changes of temperature at the various layers of the water, the sea floor, ocean topology, mountains, cliffs, underwater valleys, vegetation in the water, debris, all of that can degrade the distance at which the signal is heard, and then also as we talked about, the battery output. as we approach the end of life, that signal is going to become weaker and you're going to have to be closer to it to hear it. >> it might become weaker, but would it be intermittent because we're hearing from the chinese news agency it was about a minute and a half in which the signal was picked up. what would be the best explanation in your view if this, indeed, is the pulse of a black box? >> typically the signal is not intermittent. maybe it's weaker and it's harder to hear, but as the battery degrades, the signal would decline in output but you would not get an intermitten si in the operation of the unit.

could it be some other factors, debris in the way, other items blocking the signal? possibly, but intermitten si is not something we typically demonstrated in the lab. >> anish, miles, rob, thanks to all of you. appreciate it. so passengers on flight 370 have been ruled out as suspects in this plane's disappearance, but the crew members are still suspects. and today an interesting move by investigators when it comes to those cockpit recordings. we'll talk about that next. at your ford dealer think? they think about tires. and what they've been through lately. polar vortexes, road construction, and gaping potholes. so with all that behind you, you might want to make sure you're safe and in control. ford technicians are ready to find the right tires for your vehicle. get up to $120 in mail-in rebates on four select tires when you use the ford service credit card at the big tire event. see what the ford experts think about your tires. at your ford dealer.

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in a moment we'll get back to those so-called black boxes and the hunt for them in the indian ocean, but in malaysia today we found out that a few other people besides investigators have now heard recordings of the last conversations from the cockpit of flight 370. joe johns is in kuala lumpur

right now. joe, who heard these recordings and why? >> reporter: well, it's pretty clear that these recordings were heard by friends and perhaps other pilots, fred, who were given these recordings to actually listen to to try to identify, among other things, the voices and who was actually speaking. the families did not receive an opportunity to listen to those recordings and perhaps some concern over that, but it's quite typical because this is still considered by the law enforcement authorities to be a criminal investigation in kuala lumpur, and typically even in the united states when there's a criminal investigation going on and it involves a plane, the cockpit recordings are not released to the public, fred. >> and then i know it's in the middle of the night, but malaysian authorities, what, if anything, are they saying about these chinese news reports that something might have been

detected in the water off the coast of australia? >> very little, quite frankly. there was a tweet that went out from the transport minister earlier this evening which simply talked about prayers and hope, but certainly no confirmation because no one has that at this stage, fred. >> okay. and then clearly a lot of criticism, there has been from the very beginning, about how messy this investigation has unfolded, and now you have chinese authorities that are not necessarily reporting the information to malaysian authorities. malaysian authorities who want to pass on the information to australian authorities. what is the response about the criticism now being lodged against malaysia and, quite frankly, all of the countries involved? >> reporter: well, there's been certainly a lot of criticism and even some question as to whether malice was involved in the investigation, the handling of the plane, and so on. the transport minister at a briefing earlier this evening went so far as to actually deny

the reports that there was anything unusual, and he did that in part because the opposition party leader has actually questioned whether there was something more than incompetence involved. they felt necessary also to talk about that and deny that there was any complicity, if you will, because of all the media reports that have suggested the same thing. so they wanted to get that on the record for the future, fred. >> all right. joe johns in kuala lumpur, thank you so much. just hours away from day break there and what may be discovered or said in australia will impact people in la lmalaysia. once the black boxes are found, if they are found, what can be learned? we'll look inside a flight data recorder next. at your ford dealer think? they think about tires. and what they've been through lately. polar vortexes, road construction,

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a quick update on this hour's headlines in the search

for flight 370. a chinese ship reportedly detected a 90-second stream of pings consistent with an airliner's so-called black box. the pings were heard outside of but not far from the main search zone, but it's too soon to say whether they are, indeed, linked to the missing plane. the chinese also report that one of their search planes detected white objects floating in the ocean near the search area. previous objects were found to be trash or other ocean debris. meantime, investigators have played the recordings of flight 370's air-to-ground conversations to friends but not for the families of the pilot and the first officer in an effort to identify the speaker. we're hearing a lot about flight 370's flight data recorder or the so-called black box. the information inside that device can be a treasure trove of data that investigators could use to unlock, i guess, the reasons as to why this plane disappeared and what happened to

it. have you ever wondered what's inside a flight data recorder? and how exactly that information is stored and recovered? cnn's zain asher is here with some details on what is inside that recorder box and then how they get it out. >> right. so every single time the pilot flips a switch or twiddles a b knob, that in fact is recorded. every single one of the pilot's maneuvers are registered, speed, altitude, acceleration, when the pilots made that crucial turn. i spent the day in buffalo, new york, and an engineer walked me through how a flight data recorder, how the information on a flight data recorder rather is downloaded and read by investigators. take a listen. >> crash protected and shock mounted. >> reporter: this is what investigators will see once the black boxes for the flight are found and data from the memory downloaded for analysis. >> we pull the data up on the screen, we'll see the data in a tabular format and graphical

format. >> we connect the recorder to a power supply. >> reporter: black boxes contain hundreds of data points or parameters about the flight's movement, pilot maneuvers, speed and altitude, all displayed with a series of graphs. >> every flight data recorder records the data in binary values. it's a series of ones and zeros. in order for humans to understand that, we need to convert it into engineering units, and engineering units simply mean feet for altitude. airspeed is recorded in knots. >> reporter: so this right here, that's airspeed, correct? >> that's correct. >> reporter: so here as you see getting faster, that represents takeoff. >> yes. >> reporter: it's through graphs like these that we'll learn if someone on board deliberately nose dived the aircraft, if there was a pilot error, or a mechanical failure. >> there an engine failure there would be all kinds of indications. if it was because of fuel starvation they would know that versus if it was intentionally

cut you a. >> reporter: this represents the plane's altitude. if it suddenly dropped to a lower altitude midflight, here is where we'd see a change. if someone on board deliberately altered the flight path, we'll see this line start to dip or rise depending on the direction. >> i think one of the important things people will be looking at is who was in control of the aircraft. so when we look at the data from the flight data recorder, you can see if the inputs were coming from the autopilot or the left seat or the right seat. the pilot or the co-pilot. >> reporter: technicians can use latitude or longitude positions here to pinpoint where the plane was located at any point during flight. >> what you see on the front of this recorder is encased solid state memory module. >> reporter: although the memory chips are rarely ever damaged, airlines still need to perform regular flight data recorder maintenance and preflight testing to ensure the black boxes are up to par. the biggest challenge now is to locate them before the batteries die. >> to find that pinger in those

trenches or to find it after the pinger has stopped in those trenches is going to be extremely difficult. >> all right. you're looking right now at a black box even though it's orange. it's got reflective tape on it, and on one end you have the beacon and there's a sensor so when it hits water, that's when the pinging starts. so, zain, this goes down with the wreckage, this will sink but there's such a thing as a deployable black box, military jets already have them. >> right. >> why aren't they on commercial flights. >> number one, you have to think about the amount of resources and the time it would take to implement them. number two, you have to take cost into consideration. the black box i just showed you in my piece was $20,000. a deployable one would cost $60,000. some people say a deployable black box will not necessarily save lives. it's essentially probably too late if you're looking for it. on the other hand, if you can

find the deployable boxes sooner, then you might be able to save lives by figuring out what happened. >> spending less money and the resource that is it takes to look for the black box when it's not deployable. all that is very instructive information. thanks so much, zain asher. appreciate it. we're watching a developing story out of afghanistan where voters turned out in large numbers today for historic elections despite threats of taliban violence. so this is the first democratic transfer of presidential power in the country's history. there were no major attacks in the capital, but 20 people were killed in violence in other parts of the country. a short time ago president obama issued a written statement, part of it saying this, quote, i congratulate the millions of afghans who enthusiastically participated in today's historic elections which represent another important milestone in afghans taking full responsibility for their country as the united states and our partners draw down our forces. end quote.

that from the president of the united states. that's going to do it for me for now. i'm fredricka whitfield in atlanta. the cnn "newsroom" continues 30 minutes from now. our coverage of flight 370 continues right now with sanjay gupta, m.d. for a full month now, the world has been watching and waiting and wondering trying to figure out what happened to malaysia airline flight 370. you know, for most of us watching this on television, it's been an interesting mystery, but for the families of those on board, it's been this agonizing period of uncertainty with emotions fluctuating from tremendous hope to awful desp r despair. it's a different sort of suffering. few people know more about coping with the sort of grief than psychologist charles verson. thank you for coming back to the program. >> glad to be here. >> we've talked about different things ovehe