For half a year after MH370’s right-hand flaperon washed ashore on La Réunion, no other pieces of aircraft debris turned up. Was that remarkable piece a one-off? And then, suddenly, everyting changed. The following February an American adventure-seeker named Blaine Alan Gibson found a trianguler piece of a with the words “No Step” on a sandbar in Mozambique. Experts confirmed that it, too, came from MH370. In an instant, Gibson became famous around the world, and his examples inspired others to look more carefully at coastlines in the western Indian Ocean. In short order another half-dozen had been turned in, several of them encrusted with marine organisms that could help scientists figure out where they drifted from. As they confronted all this new data, however, search officials found them grappling with some puzzles. At first, they couldn’t figure out how the flaperon had floated to La Réunion in the time in had—and once they resolved that problem to their satisfaction, they realized they were even more perplexed by the arrival of a piece of one of the engines in South Africa. Was there something about these pieces that they didn’t understand?

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