MH370 mystery deepens with new evidence that search may have been in the wrong placeSkip to main contentADVERT
World4 min(s) read<br>Published 16:10 19 Aug 2026 GMT<br>MH370 mystery deepens with new evidence that search may have been in the wrong place
Joshua Nair
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Potential new evidence has emerged in the search for MH370, 12 years on from its disappearance.<br>The Malaysia Airlines aircraft went missing on its planned route from Kuala Lumpur to the Chinese capital of Beijing, back on March 8, 2014.<br>There were 227 passengers and 12 crew members onboard the Boeing 777 flight, all of whom have been presumed dead since the aircraft vanished.<br>Over a decade on from the biggest aviation mystery of the 21st century, it still remains a mystery.<br>It's well documented that crew onboard failed to send any distress calls despite losing contact with air traffic control at 1:19 AM over the South China Sea.<br>The aircraft then veered off course and flew an unknown path for seven hours before vanishing, never to be seen again.<br>But according to some new evidence, teams may have been looking in the wrong place this whole time.
MH370 vanished in March 2014, never to be found again. Credit: How Foo Yeen/Getty Images
New evidence suggests new search area<br>Social media content creator Dr. Harini Bhat, a clinical pharmacist turned science communicator, has explained in a recent episode of series Today I Learned Science, that everything we know about MH370 may be incorrect.<br>She explained in a video: "In early 2014, a French researcher named Jean Yves Royer was running a network of underwater microphones across the southern Indian Ocean.<br>"The network is called Ohasis Bio, and it's been listening to the ocean floor since 2010 and was built to detect seabed earthquakes and track whale migration... just a few weeks after these microphones were deployed, MH370 disappeared on March 8th, 2014," Dr Bhat said.<br>He then realized that they may have recorded the plane's crash into the sea, but the issue was that he couldn't listen to the recordings.<br>The hydrophones store recordings internally before being recovered, so Royer had to wait almost a year before they floated back to the surface.<br>Following years of analysis, Royer's findings were handed to authorities, who chose not to include it in their public records.<br>Apparently, it was too similar to hydrophone data they'd already reviewed, so his findings were long a mystery.<br>What does it mean for the investigation?<br>Malaysia officially extended its agreement with seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity through mid-2027 under a "no-find, no-fee" contract, giving the company additional time windows to complete the remaining search area along the southern Indian Ocean seabed.<br>But while they used satellites, Royer's hydrophones were already in the water.<br>The creator explained: "A 2024 study by Cardiff University researcher Usama Kadri found that aircraft crashes at sea do produce acoustic signals that travel up to 3,000 miles through water.<br>"MH370's presumed crash zone was about 1,000 miles from the nearest hydrophone, so a signal should be detectable."<br>Unfortunately, she said that the global hydrophone network found nothing but a low-frequency rumble recorded west of Rottnest Island around 1:30 UTC on March 8th.<br>The source pointed to the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, which is far from the presumed crash site of the seventh arc - this suggested a natural event such as an underwater earthquake.
A graphic illustrating 4 scenarios that could have happened to flight MH370. Credit: Graphics 24 / Getty
Is there any hope for MH370?<br>"No signals near the seventh arc does not necessarily mean MH370 left no trace," Dr Bhat claimed, adding: "It completely depends on how the plane hit the water.<br>"A high-speed, uncontrolled impact would have been loud, but a controlled ditching, where a pilot carefully sets the aircraft down on the ocean surface, would be very quiet."<br>She cited research by Dr. Usama Kadri of Cardiff University regarding how crash dynamics (such as a controlled ditching versus a high-speed impact) affect underwater acoustic signals, suggesting that quieter impact profiles might explain why certain hydrophone networks missed the event.<br>While other hydrophones are built to monitor the world's oceans, Royers were built for the southern Indian Ocean, being more sensitive and better positioned to detect a quieter event.<br>Unfortunately, the hydrophone closest to MH370's presumed crash zone was lost during recovery.<br>She explained: "The one instrument with the best shot at detecting something near the seventh arc is gone, but the remaining hydrophone survived.<br>"And from those recordings, Royer identified five acoustic events in the early hours of March 8th, around the time the plane disappeared.<br>"Two of these overlap with sounds already in the CTBTO data. Three are new."<br>While some online commentators speculate that unexplained acoustic signals near...