According to the UK Telegraph, the noise, outside the range of human hearing, had reportedly been detected around the time the plane’s last satellite transmission went off radar.
They said the noise had also travelled across the Indian Ocean and was picked up by receivers off the west coast of Australia.
Alec Duncan, a marine scientist at Curtin University in Australia, told The New York Times that he believed the chances of the sound coming from the missing Boeing 777 were about “25 to 30 percent”.
“It’s not even really a thump sort of a sound — it’s more of a dull oomph.
“If you ask me what’s the probability this is related to the flight, without the satellite data it’s 25 or 30 percent, but that’s certainly worth taking a very close look at,” he said.
Duncan had picked up the noise through a received operated off the coast of Perth used mainly for monitoring whales.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation in Vienna operating about 350 kilometres south of Perth had also detected the same noise.
The scientists however, said they have established the direction in which the sound was travelling but not the distance it travelled, leaving a potential search area spanning more than 320,000 square kilometres.
They added, its original location - nearly 5,000 kilometres north-west of Australia - would not be consistent with the current search area off the Australian coast which is based on analysis of satellite data by British firm Inmarsat.
According to acoustics expert at the test ban organisation headquarters, Mark Prior, the sound was consistent with an ocean impact or with a sealed, air-filled container sinking until it crumpled due to the water pressure.
Authorities in Australia have yet to find the plane’s wreckage in the targeted zone after pings believed to be from the plane’s black box locator beacon were said to have been detected in the Indian Ocean.
The next phase of the search, involving private contractors, will only begin in August covering more than 37,000 square kilometres.
On May 29, Australia ruled out a large swathe of Indian Ocean as flight H370’s final resting place after a lengthy underwater hunt, as a US Navy official queried whether the missing plane ever went there.
The Joint Agency Coordination Centre said that the search with a mini sub of an area where acoustic transmissions were detected in early April was now complete.
“The Joint Agency Coordination Centre can advise that no signs of aircraft debris have been found by the autonomous underwater vehicle since it joined the search effort,” JACC said.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau had also advised that “the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370” in an outcome that will extend the agony of relatives who are desperate for closure.
Australian ship Ocean Shield carrying the US Bluefin-21 sub had scoured 850 square kilometres of sea bed for the jet that vanished flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 carrying 239 people.
On May 28, the Malaysian government released a 47-page summary of communication logs from the missing plane recorded by British satellite operator Inmarsat after relatives and independent experts demanded the information.
They had accused Malaysia of withholding crucial satellite data, saying the long-awaited report is incomplete and does not prove the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean.
No wreckage had yet been found despite a massive international search off western Australia.
Many relatives are frustrated over the lack of progress, and have little faith in the complex process used to form the theory that the plane veered off course for reasons unknown after losing contact, and then crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.
Taken from : english.astroawani.com
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