There's something in those spots - a satellite image of the Indian Ocean, provided by Tomnod.
Is it a plane? The black line that curves up to the left of the over-sized white blotch could be the cockpit windows. The nose might be submerged.
Funny how the brain works. If you really want to see something, you often do - whether it's the Virgin Mary on
a slice of toast, a man on the moon or, in my case, bits of a Boeing 777 bobbing on the Indian Ocean.
Scientists refer to it as apophenia or pareidolia when we see patterns and connections in seemingly random data. Apophenia is on the same spectrum as schizophrenia, and my wife was certainly questioning my sanity as I spent Saturday night scouring blurry satellite images of endless rough seas. If these photos are anything to go by, you have virtually no chance of seeing a broken-up airliner.
MH370 was 64m nose to tail. Had it miraculously remained intact and continued to float, it would stretch 3cm across a computer screen. Of course, the reality is a search focused on finding much smaller pieces of debris, most of which are indistinguishable from the ubiquitous white streaks that show waves rolling across an otherwise dark mass.
At least, that is, to untrained eyes. So far, almost eight million of those have squinted at grainy images on Tomnod, the most popular of several crowdsourcing platforms that can now claim credit for organising the world's biggest-ever search party. Tomnod is owned by DigitalGlobe, which last week provided the image that prompted a rush of military aircraft and ships to a desolate area of ocean 2500km southwest of Perth.
