Navy official: Pings not thought to be from Flight 370's black boxes

Members of the media scramble to speak with Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia's Civil Aviation Department, at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Tuesday, May 27. Data from communications between satellites and missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was released Tuesday, more than two months after relatives of passengers say they requested that it be made public. The flight has been missing since March 8.

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<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 > >> STORY HIGHLIGHTSThe pings have been at the center of the search for seeks The new development comes as searchers wrap up first phase of their efforts Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 disappeared in March

(CNN) -- The four acoustic pings at the center of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 for the past seven weeks are no longer believed to have come from the plane's black boxes, a U.S. Navy official told CNN.

The acknowledgment came Wednesday as searchers wrapped up the first phase of the search, having scanned 329 square miles of ocean floor without finding any wreckage from the missing Boeing 777.

Authorities now almost universally believe the pings did not come from the data or cockpit voice recorders, but instead came from some other man-made source unrelated to the jetliner that disappeared on March 8, according to Michael Dean, the Navy's deputy director of ocean engineering.

If the pings had come from the recorders, searchers would have found them, he said.

Malaysia missing plane data released Missing plane search enters new phase

Dean said 'yes' if other countries involved in the search had reached the same conclusions.

'Our best theory at this point is that (the pings were) likely some sound produced by the ship ... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator,' Dean said.

The pinger locator was used by searchers to listen for underwater signals.

'Always your fear any time you put electronic equipment in the water is that if any water gets in and grounds or shorts something out, that you could start producing sound,' Dean explained.

He said it is not possible to absolutely exclude that the pings came from the black boxes, but there is no evidence now to suggest they did.

CNN's David Molko contributed to this report.

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