According to a post made on CNN.com, A noise has been detected near the last known location of a missing Argentine submarine on the day it vanished was consistent with an explosion, the Argentine navy said Thursday.
"An anomalous, singular, short, violent and non-nuclear event, consistent with an explosion, was registered," navy spokesman Enrique Balbi told a news conference in Buenos Aires.
Teams from a dozen nations have been searching by air and sea for the ARA San Juan, which has 44 crew aboard and was last contacted off the coast of Argentina on November 15.
The latest update comes as the clock runs down on the chances of finding the vessel before its air supply runs out.
The San Juan has enough air to last seven to 10 days if it has remained fully immersed since that time, experts say. If the submarine has surfaced or "snorkeled" -- that is, raised a tube to the surface to refresh the vessel's air -- since then, the crew may have bought more time.
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An undated photo provided by the Argentina Navy shows an ARA San Juan.
Anxious families have been waiting at Argentina's Mar del Plata navy base, to which the submarine was heading when it vanished, for news of their loved ones. Meanwhile, ships and aircraft are scouring a swath of the South Atlantic for the missing vessel.
Argentinian officials on Thursday briefed relatives of the crew members about the explosion. Overcome with grief, family members gathered at the navy base sobbed and held each other up.
Balbi said information about the noise had first been given to Argentina on Wednesday by the United States.
A relative of one of the 44 crew members in the missing submarine is comforted outside Argentina's Navy base in Mar del Plata on November 23.
In addition, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, or CTBTO, based in Vienna, Austria, informed Argentina on Thursday that its monitoring systems had detected an unusual sound.
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On November 15, it said, "two CTBTO hydroacoustic stations detected an unusual signal in the vicinity of the last known position of missing Argentine submarine ARA San Juan."
The sound of "an underwater impulsive event" was detected at 1:51 p.m. GMT (10:51 a.m. local time) by its underwater microphones, it said. The organization is set up to monitor compliance with the proposed nuclear test ban treaty and has 11 hydroacoustic stations positioned around the world listening for signs of nuclear explosions.
"Details and data are being made available to the Argentinian authorities to support the search operations that are underway," the organization said.
Balbi said six teams were currently searching for the missing submarine in waters of the Gulf of San Jorge, about 430 kilometers (268 miles) from the coast. The depth of the ocean varies considerably there, ranging from 200 to 2,000 meters, he said.
There was no evidence of any attack and no information on the cause of the noise, Balbi said.
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