The world was shocked when it first learned that a giant passenger aircraft on its way to Beijing, a trusty Boeing 777, had suddenly and inexplicably lost all contact with air traffic control just an hour after take-off on March 8. It was even more shocked 3 days, and then a week, and now 12 days later, when there still existed no trace of this wayward plane.

With virtually no evidence except for the disablement of its transponder and ACARS system, a pre-programmed left turn, a good-night message, and an estimated flying time of 7 hours (which has been used to construct 2 probable flight paths), the incident has spawned an international search involving 26 nations. Nothing is certain, and almost all options still remain open about what happened to the flight, and, perhaps more importantly, why. In such a case, the public needs closure and a motive, both of which authorities are uncertain will ever be uncovered.

However, the evidence, in particular the disablement of on board systems to prevent tracking and the plane’s sudden, sharp left turn, has suggested a deliberate action by someone on board.

There seem to be a couple of likely scenarios. To me, the incident smells of a hijacking. Either the pilots had a plan to abort their predetermined flight path and flew the aircraft off track, or someone on board forcibly took control of the plane to do whatever he wanted with it. So far, no terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for the disappearance, something that typically would have happened by now in the event of a hijacking. No signs immediately pointed to any one group or person, spurring thorough investigations of the 2 pilots, flight staff, and the 227 passengers on board.

Another possibility is a bomb, exploding on board and taking out the whole airplane with it in one blast. This could explain the lack of a visible plane sitting at the bottom of some ocean, if it split into smithereens and the pieces distributed themselves over a large radius.

But who knows? It could have drifted off track because of the pilots becoming incapacitated, or it could have accidentally been shot down in enemy airspace, and no one’s talking. Mechanical error is also not out of the question. An electrical fire could have caused the pilots to make the left turn towards the nearest airport, only to be incapacitated by a lack of oxygen before they could land or contact anyone. Once everyone on board was unconscious, the aircraft would have drifted onward for the 7 hours until it finally came down over the ocean. Aviation expert Ian Black offered some other complex theories in this informative article.

As for where the aircraft is at this very moment and the fate of the passengers, I suspect it’s either torn apart and everyone on board was killed instantly, to never be found, or it’s sitting at the bottom of an ocean (likely the Indian Ocean), thousands of miles below the surface. On March 20, a possible debris field was spotted in the southern Indian Ocean off of Australia, but this simply remains a lead, not actual evidence.

Very unlikely is a situation in which the plane landed, safely or by crash landing, on a remote airstrip somewhere, and now the passengers are trying to survive while awaiting rescue. With the world’s modern searching techniques, if the plane or its passengers were on land anywhere, they almost certainly would have been found by this point. I also rule out a hostage situation for these same reasons. So we should not fear the plane being reinstated as a weapon of destruction, or the passengers being held by captors for a ransom or ultimatum, because again, the search effort would have no doubt located this activity if it existed. Alas, there is no trace.

Alternately, Lion Tales reporter Nick Zandbergen suggested an outside-of-the-box theory that no one has really considered. “It never actually existed in the first place. It’s fabricated. It’s to hide an assassination,” Zandbergen said. While factually incorrect, we have to admit that governments have not always been above giving out faulty facts themselves.

Lincoln students weigh in with their own theories

Marin Matsune: “It purposely went off track. It went to the Bermuda Triangle– way off track… Usually there’s a big celebrity rumor around the time something like this happens, but this time there’s none.”

Mariah Chizer: “I think the government’s lying to us.”

Anthony Hirano: “There’s this thing called New World Order that’s trying to control everyone. [The disappearance] probably has to do with that. It’s an inside job, and there’s something the news isn’t telling us.”

Matthew Guarneros: “It’s probably a catastrophic problem in the plane such as an electrical problem.”

Phillip Nguyen: “I think what happened is the same as what happened in the movie, ‘Non-Stop’.”

Erin Thesing: “I think there’s 2 terrorists on board, because of the stolen passports, and they took control of everything and crashed it into the ocean.”

Until the aircraft is found, there’s no knowing what the catalyst was for this tragic twist to strike a mundane commercial flight. If the wreckage and the plane’s “black box” are recovered, authorities will be better able to surmise what exactly went wrong. Whatever the answer is, though, the disappearance of Flight 370 will be known universally as a tragedy for decades to come.