Kuala Lumpur, March 11 — Experts at the organisation that monitors the nuclear test ban treaty have been asked to see if they detected an explosion at high altitude involving the Malaysian Airlines jet that went missing three days ago.
The Associated Press quoted Lassina Zerbo, executive director of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), as saying that he had asked the head of the CTBTO’s International Data Centre to scrutinise available data.
Zerbo was quoted as saying that infrasound would be the best technology to check for an explosion on the missing plane if there was a monitoring station nearby.
“There’s a possibility, it’s not absolute, that the technology like the Infrazone could be able to detect” an explosion, Zerbo was reported saying.
Acoustic waves with very low frequencies that are inaudible to the human ear are called infrasound, according to the CTBTO’s website, the news agency reported.
Flight MH370 blipped off the radar in the early hours of Saturday, March 8 without any distress signal sent, fuelling widespread speculation.
Malaysian authorities say they cannot rule out terrorism as a cause for the airliner’s disappearance, especially after two passengers were found to have used stolen identities to board the aircraft.
The Boeing 777-200 aircraft left Kuala Lumpur and was about 40 minutes into its journey to Beijing when it vanished from the skies with 239 people on board.
The aircraft was last seen on radar about 120 nautical miles from Kota Baru on Malaysia’s east coast.
Malaysia is heading a 10-country hunt involving 35 aircraft and 47 ships for any sign of the lost plane.
