Amelia Earhart’s disappearance remains a mystery nearly 90 years later. While most people eventually shrugged, figuring it would always remain a mystery, and moved on, others have spent decades refusing to let the mystery fade into the annals of time. According to NBC News and Purdue University, there’s a group out there ready to give the expedition another shot, this time exploring the remote corners of the Pacific.
And it’s happening soon.
This October, a 16-person team organized by the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue University will sail more than 800 nautical miles to Nikumaroro Island, where researchers hope to find a weird thing called the “Taraia Object” that’s been sitting in a lagoon for decades might reveal itself to be Amelia Earhart’s missing plane, a Lockheed Electra.
Scientists Will Investigate a Mysterious Lagoon Object That Could Be Amelia Earhart’s Plane
This is all about finally confirming or denying a theory that’s been floating around for years, the so-called Nikumaroro Hypothesis, which argues that Ehrhardt and her navigator Fred Noonan missed the very tiny island of Howland Island in 1937 and instead landed and were stranded on Nikumaroro Island.
Those who believe there may be some validity to the theory point to old radio transmissions from the 1930s and human bones discovered in 1940 that were later lost but, before that, were argued to have been Earhart’s proportions.
As for the object that might be her plane, skeptics have long insisted that the mysterious shape captured on satellite imagery, which kind of sort of looks like a plane, might be something as simple as a downed coconut tree.
The team is looking to cut through the debate and provide some actual concrete evidence. Maybe it is a coconut tree, and maybe these supposed bones are still there. The expedition is all about finally putting the rumors and theories to the test.
The expedition was originally supposed to happen last year but was delayed as the team sought proper permits. Once the team arrives at the site, they will spend several days investigating the lagoon, where they will officially confirm if the object is, in fact, aircraft wreckage. If it is, it could be a breakthrough in one of history’s most famous unsolved cases. If not, then we will have definitively proved that coconuts are very good at wasting people’s time.
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