One of the great mysteries of the 20th century.
Amelia Earhart/GettyImages
The tragic and mysterious disappearance of the pioneering pilot Amelia Earhart has occupied the world since 1937, and over the years has stimulated many research expeditions that set out to find a thread that would shed some light on the mystery surrounding the pilot's last moments.
But now, 87 years later - we may have found the end of the line.
The latest team to join the search for Earhart's plane was made up of marine archaeologists and robotics experts in collaboration with the ocean exploration company Deep Sea Vision.
According to CNN, the team may have found a clue that could shed some light on Earhart's story.
According to the report, the team used sonar imaging - which maps the ocean floor using sound waves to measure the distance from the sea floor to the surface, and detected an anomaly in the Pacific Ocean.
The detected anomaly, it turns out, is more than 4,800 meters below the surface of the water, and corresponds to a small plane.
Team members believe the anomaly could be a Lockheed E-10 Electra, the ten-passenger plane that Earhart flew before she disappeared, during her attempt to fly around the world.
Amelia Earhart/ShutterStock, Everett Collection
Deep Sea Vision announced the unusual find via an Instagram post last Saturday.
"Some people call this event one of the greatest mysteries in history - I think it's the greatest mystery of all time," said Tony Romeo, the company's CEO. "We have an opportunity to close one of the greatest American stories."
According to Romeo, the new find was located at a distance of about 161 kilometers from Howland Island, which was the destination where the squadron Earhart and its navigator Fred Noonan were supposed to land after taking off from Papua New Guinea. The squadron and the navigator were declared missing after an extensive search by the United States government for 16 days after their disappearance.
As part of the search, the sonar system of the Deep Sea Vision scanned more than 13,468 square kilometers of the ocean floor using an advanced autonomous underwater vehicle known as the Hugin 6000. The research expedition began its search at the beginning of last September, and finished it last month, Romeo told CNN.
Amelia Earhart/ShutterStock
Romeo hopes to return to the site within a year to confirm the speculation that the anomaly found is indeed a small plane.
In order to do this, the expedition will equip a robot with a camera that will allow to study this object visually and more closely.
According to Romeo, the team will also consider bringing the bone to the surface.
"It's possible that it really is a plane and maybe even Amelia's plane - but it's too early to say definitively. It could also be just noise in the sonar data, something geological or even another plane," said Andrew Pitroschka, an underwater archaeologist at the University of California.
"However, if I was looking for Amelia's plane and this anomaly was in the data set - I would want to investigate it further."
Over the years, many theories have been circulated as to the circumstances of the squadron's disappearance.
A 2017 History Channel documentary proposed a theory that Earhart and Noonan crashed in the Marshall Islands, about 1,609 kilometers from Howland Island.
There, according to the theory, they were captured by locals and taken to the island of Saipan, held hostage and finally died.
This theory was based on a photo from the United States National Archives that showed some blurry figures, which researchers said showed the squadron and its aircraft.
But the most common theory, also adopted by the US government, is that Earhart and Noonan crashed in the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island because the plane ran out of fuel.
"The new sonar image is of particular interest because of its proximity to Howland Island," said Dorothy Cochran, curator of aviation in the National Air and Space Museum's Department of Aeronautics.
"Examining Earhart's communications, it can be seen that her plane's radio transmissions gradually got stronger as she got closer to Howland Island - indicating that she did get closer to the island before disappearing."
However, although the anomaly found by Deep Sea Vision does resemble Earhart's plane in shape, it lacks some of the characteristics of the model he flew.
David Jordan, president of ocean exploration company Nauticos, said the engine room looked different.
"You can't identify anything from a sonar image alone because sound can be complicated and the object can be damaged in unexpected ways and change its shape. Therefore, you can never tell that something is indeed (or not) from a sonar image alone," Jordan explained.
According to him, "In order to confirm that it is indeed Earhart's Lockheed plane, it is necessary to return to the site to investigate the object. The final confirmation will be given when the code "NR16020" printed on the lower part of the wing of the missing plane is found. If the plane was indeed lying at such a depth in the ocean - in an area where temperatures are low very much and the oxygen content is thin, the plane's skeleton can be well preserved."
"Earhart was kind of the rock star of the era - the Taylor Swift of the era and she disappears without a trace," Cochran added, "that's the mystery of the 20th century - and now she's entered the 21st century."
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