It seems completely absurd that, in this day and age of Big Brother-like constant monitoring, a plane with 239 people on board can disappear without a trace and remain as such for 15 months.

Theories abound as to what exactly occurred on March 8 of last year (some of the more popular HERE, HERE and HERE) but a mathematician from a Texan university thinks he might have cracked the code. CNN reports:

Goong Chen, using “applied mathematics, computational fluid dynamics and numerical simulations of a Boeing 777 in a classic ‘water entry’ problem,” determined that a plane that piercing vertically into the sea would not break apart.

Simply put, a plane hitting the water at an angle would scatter its parts across the surface of the water. But one hitting at a near-vertical angle would shoot into the water with minimal damage and zoom straight to the bottom.

The vertical dive would account for the lack of debris in the aftermath, although Chen offers no explanation for why the dive would have occurred in the first place:

The true final moments of MH370 are likely to remain a mystery until someday when its black box is finally recovered and decoded.

Some of the more ‘out there’ theories for the reasons the plane went down have also been rehashed including these two gems below:

Some assert a meteor struck the plane. But the astronomical odds against such an event are high, to put it mildly.

Lisa Williams, a psychic in California, said she believed the plane went down somewhere with its passengers still alive, though she doesn’t have proof.

“I do believe that it actually crashed and I see a lot of trees . . . ” Williams said. “I also believe there was a hijacking.”

If you believe that let me gaze into my crystal ball for a second and predict ridicule in your near future.

[source:cnn]