MH370 After almost a month with scant information, a litany of conspiracy theories has emerged to fill the void in the bid to explain Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370’s mysterious disappearance.

There is even a webpage on the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, listing these theories.

“How could the most sophisticated military base in the world not detect a commercial plane?” several Twitter users asked.

                        

Among the theories, it appears that the most popular and persistent one revolves around Diego Garcia, a joint United States-United Kingdom military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

As with any conspiracy theory, the details and purported motivations vary, but it involves MH370 being hijacked - whether remotely or by special forces units - and then flown to Diego Garcia where the crew and passengers are being held prisoners.

Malaysiakini had been monitoring Twitter for mentions of MH370 over the past three weeks and observed that many of these mentioned Diego Garcia ( right ), especially among tweets that have been shared by several other users.

The Diego Garcia story persisted even as other theories on what  had happened to the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft rose and fell  in the public discourse.

As of yesterday, there are 1,000 to 2,000 tweets per hour on MH370 depending on the time of day, while tweets mentioning Diego Garcia are steady at about 50 tweets per hour.

Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein and White House officials have both dismissed the Diego Garcia theory.

The military base is also located over 4,000 kilometres away from where satellite analysis had suggested was MH370’s last known location.

At this point, the satellite analysis remains the most concrete source available to determine where the plane might have gone down.

From the plausible to the bizarre

Another theory, which has some traction among netizens in China, suggests that a hijacker had taken control of the aircraft, and then radioed demands related to the March 8 Court of Appeal decision on Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim’s Sodomy II trial just hours before the flight.

These purported demands were not met, according to this theory, and the hijacker plunged the aircraft into the sea. What allegedly followed was a cover-up operation orchestrated by Malaysia authorities.

Hishammuddin had said that there had been no demands from anyone in relation to MH370, while Chinese ambassador to Malaysia, Huang Huikang, has expressed is confidence that Malaysia is not hiding anything.

Chinese nationals make up 153 of the 239 persons on board the aircraft.

Other theories - ranging from the plausible to the bizarre - include:

• A technical issue such as an electrical fire and decompression had incapacitated the crew and passengers, leaving the aircraft on auto-pilot until it runs out of fuel.

 

Following an electrical failure, the MH370 could not identify itself to military authorities and was subsequently shot down, and a cover-up was orchestrated upon realising the mistake.

 

MH370 was hijacked to be converted into a weapon for a 9/11-style attack later.

 

Alien abduction or black holes - the latter theory even got featured in an Utusan Malaysi a front page.

It should be stressed that in the absence of concrete evidence, these theories should be taken with a huge pinch of salt.

To quote the late astronomer and prominent science writer Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”