No worries, the time just stuck out to me with it being the same time as the last phone stuff. I do hope we have a breakthrough soon, I don’t think he went in the water (even though from reading WS a lot it feels like that’s the answer to every missing young man on a night out!) but it’s hard to fathom all the walking in circles and then just vanishing.
I agree. You probably read it a few pages back but I traced Jack's route based on everything we publicly know and it seems inconceivable that Jack would walk around the water, manage to avoid falling in despite walking over bridges multiple times during the route.
After some careful consideration, I looked at which parts of the walk would raise concerns for being the most 'dangerous' spots which could make for a trip/slip/fall into water. And walking past merchants rd for example... if you were going to fall in somewhere, that road would be in my top 2-3 places to fall in...but he didn't. Not only that, but he navigated (potentially drunk/tipsy and after a bang on the head) around the whole of the Cumberland Basin. We know this. CCTV proves it. The final CCTV capture shows him walking away from water.
So when you consider all of that, it just seems implausible that he could end up in the water. There were so, so many opportunities and risks on that walk, that the probability of ending up in water after navigating around it seem slim to none.
But the sad thing is, we can't even rule it out. It's possible (as I alluded to in previous posts) that Jack somehow evaded anymore CCTV and ended up in the Basin, but based on what we know, the theory seems weak and makes no sense. Why navigate around it for a long period of time, walk away from it....only to go back towards it and fall in? I can't grasp that.
The phone (for me) is the key to this entire thing. The phone received messages and was on the network until the early hours of the morning, even providing Jack's mother with the GPS location. A phone would likely struggle to do that in shallow water. In deep water, no, I doubt it.
GPS signals penetrate water very poorly because they're radio waves in the L-band frequency (around 1.5 GHz). Water absorbs these signals rapidly, so a signal will significantly degrade or be blocked. You're looking at depths of 30-60cm of water to completely block a GPS signal.
Moreover, the water in the Cumberland Basin contains salt water (tidal water from the River Avon). Salt water is more effective blocking GPS signals than fresh water is (due to salt water being more conductive, and GPS wont penetrate through conductive materials).
So if Jack's phone was continuing to receive messages (and we're told it was), then this means the phone was highly unlikely to be under water. Jack was heard saying "hello" in the early hours on his phone, so he had possession of it.. for me, it all points to the phone (and by extension, Jack) being on land. The phone losing turning off on the network was likely due to the battery running low.
My objective opinion mixed with some facts about how water affects GPS signals.
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