The History Channel is about to add a breakthrough development to the mystery surrounding Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. The upcoming documentary “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” which premieres on Sunday, July 9, includes photo evidence suggesting Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan survived the plane crash and became Japanese prisoners of war. The photo can be seen by heading to PEOPLE. 

Former FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry is behind the documentary, which attempts to finally answer what happened to Earhart and Noonan after their plane went down in the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937. The photo was discovered by former U.S. Treasury Agent Les Kinney in 2012 and is revealed for the first time in the documentary.

The image shows Earhart and Noonan on a dock, with the duo’s Lockheed airplane aboard a ship. The photo would confirm a popular theory stating Earhart and Noonan survived the crash and were held prisoner by the Japanese on the island of Saipan, where they both eventually died.

“This absolutely changes history,” says Henry. He suggests the Japanese believed Earhart and Noonan were American spies and took them in as prisoners.

The photo was discovered in what was once a top secret file in the National Archives. Independent analysts have told History the photo appears to be legitimate.

“When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that’s been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that’s Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan,” Henry told NBC News. 

“Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence” debuts this Sunday at 9pm on the History Channel.

Watch the report “Today Show” did on Wednesday about the never-before-seen photo shown in the movie below:

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A lost photo may shed new light on the mysterious death of famous aviator Amelia Earhart.

The photo, which will be featured in a new History channel special called "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence," was discovered in the National Archives more than 80 years after her death. In it, a woman who appears to be Earhart sits on a dock in the Marshall Islands near to a man who resembles her navigator Fred Noonan.

After becoming the first female pilot to fly a plane across the Atlantic Ocean, Earhart set off to circumnavigate the globe in July 1937. Her plane vanished without a trace during the flight and, by 1939, both Earhart and Noonan were declared dead.

But the new photo, which shows figures that appear like Earhart and Noonan, could challenge the common theory that the plane crashed somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director for the FBI, told NBC News that he's confident the photo is legitimate and pictures Earhart sitting on the dock.

"When you pull out, and when you see the analysis that's been done, I think it leaves no doubt to the viewers that that's Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan," said Henry. Her plane appears to be on a barge in the background being towed by a large ship.

According to NBC News, the team that uncovered the photo believes that the photo demonstrates that Earhart and Noonan were blown off course. The latest photo could suggest that Earhart was captured by the Japanese military, experts told NBC News.

While current Japanese authorities told the news outlet that they had no record of Earhart ever being in their custody, American investigators insisted that the photo strongly suggests that Earhart survived the crash and was taken into captivity. 

"We believe that the Koshu took her to Saipan [the Mariana Islands], and that she died there under the custody of the Japanese," said Gary Tarpinian, the executive producer behind the History project.

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A lost photo may shed new light on the mysterious death of famous aviator Amelia Earhart.

The photo, which will be featured in a new History channel special called "Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence," was discovered in the National Archives more than 80 years after her death.

In it, a woman — who appears to be Earhart — sits on a dock in the Marshall Islands near a man who resembles her navigator Fred Noonan.

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Majuro (Marshall Islands) (AFP) - A photograph supposedly showing Amelia Earhart alive in the Marshall Islands in 1937 that caused a stir earlier this month is from a Japanese book published years before the famed aviatrix disappeared, a military expert said Wednesday.

The blurry image apparently showing a white woman sitting on a Marshallese dock generated worldwide interest when it was included in a History Channel documentary screened last weekend.

It renewed interest in the fate of the legendary American and her navigator Fred Noonan who disappeared over the Pacific in July 1937 while attempting an around-the-world flight.

The programme suggested the undated photograph found in the National Archives in Washington showed Earhart and Noonan were captured by Japanese forces. 

But military expert Matthew B. Holly​ said he had tracked the original image to a Japanese photographer's travelogue through Micronesia published before Earhart vanished.

Holly said that unlike the Washington photograph, the original -- available at Japan’s National Diet Library Digital collection— is dated.

He said the documents showed the photograph was taken at Jaluit Atoll in 1935 and published as part of the 111-page travelogue in 1936.

"There is no question the photo was taken in 1935," he told AFP.

"The book is a photo collection of a man travelling on (a Japanese) vessel. The table of contents is a travelogue that looks like Saipan down to Yap, Pohnpei, and a number of photos in the Marshalls ending the book."

Holly, an American living in Majuro, has spent decades tracking down the locations of lost US aircraft and the identities of American servicemen killed in action in the western Pacific nation.

He was sceptical about the claims made about Earhart's appearance in the photograph from the outset, citing the absence of Japanese flags and soldiers in the image.

Earhart and Noonan vanished after taking off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, and the prevailing belief is that they ran out of fuel and ditched their twin-engine Lockheed Electra in the Pacific Ocean near remote Howland Island.

There has long been an oral tradition in the Marshalls that the pair crashed on a small island in Mili Atoll and were later seen at Jaluit.

But the US-based International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery dismisses the Marshalls theory.

It believes Earhart went down at Nikumaroro Atoll in the central Pacific nation of Kiribati and has launched several expeditions there searching for evidence.

SEE ALSO: Amelia Earhart's disappearance may finally be explained with one photo

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• A new study using modern forensic osteology methods reveals that bones found on the the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro are likely to be of the famed aviator Amelia Earhart.
• Earhart disappeared during an attempted flight around the world in 1937.

A new analysis concludes that bones found in 1940 on the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro are likely the remains of famed aviator Amelia Earhart.

The new report is the latest chapter in a back-and-forth that has played out about the remains, which are now lost.

All that survive are seven measurements, from the skull and bones from the arm and leg. Those measurements led a scientist in 1941 to conclude that they belong to a man.

Now University of Tennessee anthropologist Richard Jantz has weighed in with a new analysis of the measurements, published in the journal Forensic Anthropology.

"Some have summarily dismissed these bones as the remains of Amelia Earhart because they were assessed as male by Dr. D. W. Hoodless, principal of the Central Medical School, Fiji, in 1940," Jantz wrote in the abstract of the study.

But forensic osteology was not a well-developed discipline when Hoodless' conducted his assessment, especially concerning the methods and data used to determine the sex of the bones, Jantz wrote. 

Jantz compared "Earhart’s bone lengths with the Nikumaroro bones using Mahalanobis distance," he wrote. "This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99% of individuals in a large reference sample. This strongly supports the conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart."

Earhart disappeared during an attempted flight around the world in 1937. The search for an answer to what happened to her and her navigator has captivated the public for decades.

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• Amelia Earhart was one of the most famous aviators in the world when she vanished in 1937.
• Her disappearance remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of all time.
• From her being a spy to her having lived in New Jersey under an assumed identity, many conspiracy theories surround her disappearance.

Amelia Earhart was the first female to fly across the Atlantic.

However, 81 years ago the American aviatrix vanished over the Pacific Ocean during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe by plane. To this day, the mystery behind her disappearance remains unsolved.

Here's what we know: on July 2, 1937, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, departed from Lae, New Guinea. They were heading for Howland Island, a small island located in the central Pacific Ocean, but they never arrived. By 1939, both Earhart and Noonan were declared dead.

While the case remains unsolved, conspiracy theories abound over the late pilot's fate. Here are five of the most compelling guesses behind what happened to them.

1. Earhart crashed her plane and drowned in the Pacific Ocean.

Crash-and-sink theorists postulate that Earhart ran out of fuel while trying to locate tiny Howard Island, and subsequently crashed into the open ocean and drowned.

This theory is supported by the fact that Earhart and Noonan put in a number of calls to the US Coast Guard ship "Itasca," communicating that they were low on fuel and having trouble finding Howard Island.

Despite the $4 million rescue authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to find the pilots, no trace of the aircraft, Earhart, or Noonan was ever found.

2. She landed safely — but on the wrong island.

We know that Earhart was aware that she was running low on fuel, which means one of two things — she either crashed somewhere, or landed successfully.

One theory suggests that Earhart managed to land her aircraft safely — just not on Howard Island, as anticipated. The International Historic Aircraft Recovery Group believe that Earhart ultimately landed on Gardner Island, a nearby deserted island that is now called Nikumaroro, when she couldn't locate Howard, and then perished as a castaway.

However, since her aircraft was never found this remains nothing but a theory.

3. She was captured and taken prisoner by the Japanese.

Last year a photo was discovered in the National Archives that depicts a woman who resembles Earhart sitting on a dock in the Marshall Islands near a man who resembles her navigator, Noonan.

The discovery of the photograph helps substantiate the theory that Earhart and Noonan didn't crash at all, but instead landed in the Marshall Islands, where they were taken prisoner by the Japanese.

Per INSIDER, retired government investigator Les Kinney told NBC News that the photo "clearly indicates that Earhart was captured by the Japanese," despite Japanese authorities' insistence that they have no record of Earhart ever being in their custody.

• Amelia Earhart disappeared in her plane over 80 years ago, but since then there have been many technological advances to keep that from happening.
• Today, radar, satellites, and other flight-tracking systems keep a close eye on planes around the globe. It's a mix of old and new technologies which come together to create a larger system of checks and backups.
• Despite these advances, however, there are still problems with tracking planes in certain remote regions. To remedy this, coordinated international reform efforts are set to take hold over the next few years.

In July of 1937, Amelia Earhart, her navigator Fred Noonan, and her Lockheed Electra plane took off from New Guinea, at the tail-end of her quest to circle the globe. They were never seen again.

Fast forward to March 2018, when a report from Forensic Anthropology claimed to have identified Earhart's bones, found on a remote atoll in the Pacific Ocean in 1940, with 99% accuracy — contradictory to the initial original report, which said the bones were from a man. Even now, the circumstances of Earhart's disappearance remain somewhat of a mystery. Her plane, for example, is still missing.

Nowadays, a disappearing plane is almost unthinkable (though it can happen — many of us remember when Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished in 2014).

But for the most part, technology has taken us far from the days when a person could fly out into the unknown, never to be seen again. For one thing, the unknown feels hard to come by these days. For another, air traffic is highly regulated, backed up by technological advances and overlapping systems that allow planes to be monitored at almost every stage.

One such system is radar, or "Radio Detecting and Ranging," which uses radio waves to keep air traffic controllers aware of each aircraft's location, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The concept of radar has been around since before Earhart first climbed into a cockpit, according to Britannica. Despite its age and relative simplicity, it remains a staple for most flight-tracking systems, Mark Millam, a vice president at the Flight Safety Foundation, told Business Insider.

But some programs, like the Federal Aviation Administration's NextGen program, are focusing on switching from radar to a more accurate and reliable satellite-based tracking technology. In fact, most planes operating in U.S.-controlled airspace must be equipped with satellite-compliant technology by January 2020, according to the FAA.

When radar and satellites aren't available, in remote areas for example, it's up to flight crews to report their position back to air traffic control centers, Millam said. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, has recommended that commercial planes be required to report their positions every 15 minutes, according to The Guardian. This recommendation applies starting on November 8, 2018.

Millam said that most countries are already complying with that standard. But it still leaves a bit to be desired, especially when you're travelling hundreds of miles per hour.

That's where the Global Aeronautical Distress Safety System (GADSS), another set of potential reform initiatives, comes in. It calls for things like automating the location-reporting process for planes in distress, thereby shrinking the search radius for missing planes to a six-nautical-mile radius. That standard goes into effect on January 1, 2021.

"You'll get a tighter and tighter window of where that aircraft is if it begins to show signs that it's not operating like a typical aircraft. Altitude, pressurization ... GADSS is meant to be able to identify these aircraft early, report more information back to air traffic control and help recover the aircraft," Millam said.

As it stands, however, these layers of accountability have fallen short in the not-so-distant past. Consider, for example, the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. The plane, which had over 200 people on board, was never found, as Business Insider previously reported. It was the catalyst which later prompted the ICAO to create GADSS.

It's worth noting that this event was an anomaly for modern aviation.

"That aircraft flew for hours after it reported that it was not on its planned flight path. That is something that had never been seen before," Millam said. "With the changes that are proposed since Malaysia 370, since Amelia Earhart — there's been so much more that's been set up in terms of coverage."

When planes crash on land, force-activated emergency-locator transmitters are meant to help search and rescue locate the ones that don't make it home. And larger aircraft flying internationally are required to have underwater locating devices, which activate automatically and send out a signal for at least 30 days.

Despite the loss of that Malaysia Airlines flight, however, the expectation that your flight will arrive at the intended destination is still mostly taken in stride. Planes still crash, but it's much more difficult for a plane to disappear than it was in Earhart's day. And given the flight-tracking proposals on the table, it will only become more difficult as new initiatives and technologies become the norm.

Over the years, Earhart's mysterious disappearance has taken her from a person of public fascination to that of an aeronautic legend and an icon of female empowerment. In honor of her impressive life and pioneering contributions to aviation, July 24 is celebrated as Amelia Earhart Day.

Although we've mostly managed to move beyond the phenomenon of vanishing aircraft, her disappearance does still resonate with a certain degree of fascination, reflecting our deepest desires for exploration and discovery — even if that means confronting the unknown.

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• Amelia Earhart's 122nd birthday is on July 24. She disappeared just a few weeks before her 40th birthday on July 2, 1937.
• No one knows what happened to her and her navigator Fred Noonan.
• They're not the only people to vanish without a trace.
• Natalee Holloway hasn't been seen since the night before she was supposed to fly home from Aruba in 2005, and Tara Calico never came home from a 1988 bike ride.
  
• Visit INSIDER's homepage for more stories.

Human disappearances have been happening for centuries, leaving the people around them and many future generations grappling with questions of what, exactly, happened.

Here are 14 cases of unsolved disappearances and missing people that captivated the world. 

To this day, no one knows exactly what happened to pilot Amelia Earhart and her navigator during their attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

Here's what we know: Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were attempting to fly around the world when their plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937. Since then, not a trace of Earhart, Noonan, nor their plane has ever been recovered.

The most widely accepted theory is that their flight ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean, but there are plenty of conspiracy theories out there, ranging from wildly unlikely to semi-plausible.

One theory recently gained traction due to a photo uncovered in the National Archives. The picture appears to show a woman and a man that look like Earhart and Noonan on a dock off the coast of the island of Saipan. Some people believe this photo is proof that the two were captured by the Japanese military, something the Japanese military summarily denies.

Anne Marie Fahey went missing in 1996 and has never been found, though a man was tried for and convicted of her murder.

Technically the case of Fahey's disappearance has been solved, but her body was never found.

Fahey was 30 years old at the time of her disappearance. Three years later, in 1999, her boyfriend, married lawyer Thomas Capano, was found guilty of her murder. According to Delaware Online, Capano shot Fahey while she tried to break up with him then dumped her body in the Atlantic Ocean, having put it in a cooler. 

Both of Capano's brothers admitted they helped him get rid of the evidence, one of them even helping him to get rid of the body itself, according to Delaware Online. They both ultimately testified against him. Another one of Capono's girlfriend's admitted to buying him a gun.

Capano was convicted and sentenced to death, which was later overturned and converted to life in prison. He died in 2011. 

Maura Murray emailed professors that she'd be missing class for a week due to a death in the family in 2004 and was never heard from again.

Murray was just 21 years old when she disappeared in 2004. She was a nursing student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and emailed her professors that she would be missing the next week of classes due to a death in the family. There had been no such death in the Murray family.

The last time she was seen was on the side of the road after her car had allegedly skidded off. A bus driver told police that he had offered to call for help, but he said she replied that she had already called for roadside assistance. The bus driver got home, still felt like something was off, and called the police anyway. By the time that authorities arrived, Murray was gone.

An Oxygen series about her disappearance brought the case back into the limelight, and theories abound as to how and why she disappeared, from intentionally disappearing to getting lost in the woods to encountering a dangerous animal.

Natalee Holloway went missing on a school trip to Aruba in 2005 shortly after she graduated from high school. The case ignited an international media storm.

Holloway's case has been picked apart for years, ever since her 2005 disappearance. She was last seen outside an Aruban nightclub the night before she and her classmates were supposed to fly back to the US. Her parents were notified that she was missing when she failed to show up to her flight home and within a few days, Holloway's family was on the island.

One of the prime suspects in Holloway's disappearance is Joran van der Sloot, one of the last people to see Holloway alive. He was arrested multiple times in conjunction with the case, but was released each time due to a lack of evidence. Over the years, van der Sloot's story has changed multiple times. 

Van der Sloot is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence for the murder of Peruvian Stephany Flores.

Tara Calico never returned home from a bike ride.

Calico, who was 19 at the time, told her mother to call the police if she wasn't back from her bike ride by noon on the day she went missing in September 1988. Calico never returned from her ride and was never seen again.

During her ride, onlookers shared that they saw a truck following Calico and harassing her, though they thought it was her friends playing a joke on her. All that was ultimately found was Calico's broken Walkman on the side of the road.

Almost a year after her disappearance, a suspicious Polaroid was found in a Florida parking lot over 1,000 miles away from where she was last seen. The photo shows a young woman and a boy bound with their mouths taped shut. Calico's mother believed it was her daughter. The FBI, on the other hand, was unable to verify whether or not it was her.

Vermont's "Bennington Triangle" continues to confound authorities.

Between 1920 and 1950, at least 10 people mysteriously vanished in a patch of woods surrounding Glastenbery Mountain that has been dubbed the "Bennington Triangle."

The name was coined in 1992 by author Joseph Citro. According to a website dedicated to the "Triangle," disappearances include tour guide Middie Rivers in 1945, college student Paula Welden in 1946, and 8-year-old Paul Jepsen in 1950.

Amy Wroe Bechtel vanished without a trace during a run in 1997.

Bechtel went missing during a run on July 24, 1997, which police know as her car was found near a running trail she frequented.

Her car and an eyewitness who claimed they saw a woman who could have been Bechtel jogging was all the evidence there was. Six years later, a watch similar to the one Bechtel owned was found in the area, but it was impossible to connect it to her.

According to Fremont County sheriff Sgt. Roger Rizor, the lead investigator, there is just one person of interest: Bechtel's husband, Steve, who has since refused to take a polygraph test.

"In my mind," Sgt. Rizor told the Billings Gazette, "there is only one person that I want to talk to, only one person who has refused to talk to law enforcement, and that's her husband."

Steve Bechtel maintains his innocence and was able to provide an alibi for the time of his wife's disappearance. While her case remains open, her husband declared her dead in absentia in 2004.

Sherry Lynn Marler went to grab a soda from a grocery store vending machine and was never seen again.

On June 6, 1984, Marler was 12 years old when she went into town with her stepdad, who had some business to attend to. Marler was thirsty and asked for some money to get a soda from the vending machine. She was supposed to meet him back at the truck. She was never officially seen again.

According to the Charley Project, Marler was seen three times over the years, but none of these sightings has been verified.

Morgan Nick, 6, disappeared from a ballpark in 1995.

Nick was last seen on June 9, 1995, at a ballpark in Alma, Arkansas. She had been there with her mother but had left her side with two friends to go catch lightning bugs. According to a timeline compiled by CBS affiliate 5 News, she was last seen emptying sand from her shoes around 10 p.m. that night.

Around the same time, a red truck pulling a white camper van was seen driving away from the park, which was deemed suspicious. Just a few days later, two more young girls were almost abducted by a man matching the description of the driver in Alma.

Mary Badaracco disappeared from her home under mysterious circumstances in 1984.

Badaracco's car was in her driveway with the side mirror smashed, and her wedding ring and car keys were on the kitchen counter, but she was nowhere to be found.

According to her husband, Badaracco took off with $100,000 in exchange for their home. The two were planning to divorce.

No evidence of the money has ever been found, however, and her husband didn't report her missing. He claimed that she had left her life, her job, and her daughters behind to start a new life.

Badaracco's daughters convinced the police to classify the disappearance as a homicide, and there have been tips throughout the years, including a potential Hell's Angels connection.

Jessica Gutierrez was taken by "the man with the magic hat and the beard," according to her sister.

The 4-year-old was kidnapped from her bed on June 6, 1986, in South Carolina. Her sister, Becky, told authorities that "the man with the magic hat and the beard took her last night," as their mom frantically searched their home.

"I need to find my daughter," Gutierrez's mother, now 60, told The State in 2017. "I don't know how much time I have left."

The Sodder family home caught fire in 1945 and four of their children escaped. The other five were never found.

On Christmas Eve 1945, a fire broke out at the Sodder home. Of their nine children, four escaped. The house burned down completely before the fire was able to be put out, and the other five children were nowhere to be found — not even teeth were able to be salvaged.

The fire chief at the time concluded that the fire had been hot enough to melt bone, and death certificates were issued, but that claim has been challenged over the years. Other theories claim that the Sodders were the target of organized crime, that the fire had been set intentionally, and that the ladder that was usually propped up against their home had been stolen.

Years later, Jennie, the Sodder matriarch, received a photo in the mail captioned "Louis Sodder," one of her sons who had been ruled dead. He was nine years old at the time of the fire.

The living Sodders maintain that their siblings did not die in the fire, and that something suspicious went down that Christmas Eve.

A mysterious passenger on a flight to Seattle demanded $200,000 and then jumped out of the flying plane. All we know is that he bought a ticket under the alias D.B. Cooper.

In 1971, a man casually drinking a bourbon and soda on his flight to Seattle passed a note to a stewardess explaining that he had a bomb in his suitcase and requesting $200,000 in $20 bills. As soon as the flight landed in Seattle, he received his money, let the other passengers off, and demanded that the pilot take him to Mexico City.

But before he reached the southern border, Cooper shockingly made the choice to skydive out of the plane at 5,000 feet in terrible conditions, wearing his normal pants and loafers.

It was likely that Cooper did not survive the fall, but nonetheless, a manhunt was on. Cooper, which was probably an alias, was never found. In 2016, the FBI officially stopped investigating.

Lauren Spierer was last seen walking barefoot around her college town at around 4:30 a.m. in June 2011.

Spierer's disappearance was unusual in that her entire night, right up until a few moments before her disappearance, was trackable via security cameras. The 20-year-old Indiana University student went out with her friends during a summer night in 2011, and was never heard from again.

She was last seen at around 4:30 a.m. leaving a friend's apartment. Her boyfriend reported her missing after she left her phone at a bar, and a bartender began responding to her texts.

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• Amelia Earhart, born July 24, 1897, is one of history's legendary aviators, and was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. 
• On July 2, 1937, her plane vanished in the Pacific Ocean as she was attempting to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world in a plane. 
• In recent years, new evidence has emerged which experts claim provides new clues about what happened to Earhart. 
• One theory is that she was captured by the Japanese, while another claims she survived a crash landing and was stranded on a remote island. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On July 2, 1937, aviator Amelia Earhart made radio contact with the Itasca, a US Coast Guard vessel anchored off the coast off Howland Island, a tiny strip in the center of the Pacific Ocean about 1,700 nautical miles from Hawaii. 

She was on the last and most perilous phase of her historic attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in a plane. 

In her brief radio message she asked the Itasca to help her navigate her plane onto the island, where she had planned to refuel. 

It was the last time anyone is known to have heard her alive. 

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, never made it to Howland Island. After weeks of searches no trace of her plane was found in the ocean. Earhart was declared legally dead by US officials in 1939.

The mystery of what happened to Earhart and Noonan after they lost radio contact with the Itasca persists to this day. 

Officials at the time believed that the plane ran out of fuel after they failed to reach Howland Island and it crashed into the Pacific Ocean, killing Earhart and Noonan. 

Others though believe that new clues a stranger fate. 

Last year a grainy photograph was unearthed from the US National Archives. It was taken on Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which was then controlled by Japan. In the image there is a woman sitting on a dock who some claim bears a a striking resemblance to Earhart. A man standing near her they claim is Noonan, while on a Japanese naval vessel, it is alleged, pieces of plane wreckage are pictured. 

The theory goes that Earhart must have landed in or near the Marshall Islands and been captured, eventually dying in Japanese captivity. The image has been seized on by supporters of the theory. 

Former U.S. Treasury agent named Les Kinney unearthed the image. In a 2017 History Channel investigation, forensics expert Kent Gibson identified two of the people in the picture as Earhart and Noonan. Eyewitnesses also claimed to have seen the pair on the island.

Others though have poured scorn on the theory.

"This photograph has people convinced. I'm astounded by this. I mean, my God! Look at this photograph... Let's use our heads for a moment. It's undated. They think it's from 1937. Okay. If it's from July 1, 1937 then it can't be Amelia, because she hadn't taken off yet," Ric Gillespie, an Earhart biographer told the BBC.

Japanese authorities told NBC News that they had no record of Earhart being in captivity. 

Another theory is that Earhart managed to pilot the plane to the island of Nikumaroro in Kiribati after swerving southeast, travelling a further 400 miles and crash landing. 

There, it is believed, she managed survive a few days or weeks as a castaway, before dying.  Here, the evidence may be more convincing. 

In 1940, British soldiers exploring to see if Nikumaroro could be inhabited discovered a human skull. They also discovered a navigation tool, bone fragments, and a bottle of a type of herbal liqueur Earhart used to carry with her. 

The human remains were tested, and found to have been male. 

But according to a 2017 paper by Professor Richard Jantz from the University of Tennessee, the tests may have been wrong, and are likely Earhart's.

The remains found on Nikumaroro were lost years ago, but Janz and used pictures of them, and details of Earhart's physical proportions to reach the conclusion.

"This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99% of individuals in a large reference sample," the report states.

In an email to Business Insider, Jantz said that the study offered the best account yet provided of what had happened to Earhart and Noonan. 

"The measurements of the bones compared to measurements we obtained from a photo of Amelia Earhart support the hypothesis that they were her remains. There are still a lot of skeptics and they are welcome to present further evidence that supports or fails to support the hypothesis," he explained. 

"In addition to the bone evidence there is a lot of artifact evidence discovered along with the bones and in subsequent archaeological expeditions to the island showing that a Euro-American female was on the island. Taken together the evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that Earhart landed on Nikumaroro and perished there."

The absence of conclusive proof means that speculation is likely to continue.

Bram Kleppner, Earhart's great nephew, told USA Today that it is Earhart's legacy that should be the focus of attention. 

"Amelia's life was much more interesting than her disappearance," he remarked. 

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• The Smithsonian Institution is putting 2.8 million images online for anyone to access for the first time ever.
• The online open-access platform has images from all 19 Smithsonian museums, plus research centers, archives, and the National Zoo.
• The Smithsonian says it will add 200,000 more images by the end of 2020, eventually hoping to digitize all 155 million objects in its collection. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Smithsonian is the latest institution to open part of its collection to online visitors. 2.8 million images will now be accessible through an online platform, and enter into the public domain, Smithsonian Magazine reported.

So far, the collection has 2.8 million images from across the Smithsonian's 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and even the National Zoo. It also said that it will add 200,000 more images by the end of 2020, with the eventual goal of digitizing its entire 155 million item collection, which also continues to grow. 

The Smithsonian joins other museums around the world in digitizing its collections, like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Art Institute of Chicago, though digital culture heritage expert Simon Tanner said that the scope of the Smithsonian's project is "unprecedented."

Check out some of the highlights now available online.

SEE ALSO: See inside Zhengzhou, the Chinese city shut down by the coronavirus where the world's largest iPhone factory is trying to attract workers with $1,000 bonuses

1. The Lockheed Vega 5B that Amelia Earhart flew across both the Atlantic and the United States.

2. Muhammad Ali's boxing headgear.

3. A proof of the 1765 Stamp Act, part of the lead-up to the American Revolution and one of only 32 in the world.

4. The plane the Wright brothers first flew for only 12 seconds in 1903

5. Certainly less well-known than other entries on this list, this "Natural Creeping Baby Doll" was patented in 1871.

6. The Mercury Friendship 7 Capsule, the vehicle John Glenn used to become the first American to orbit the Earth.

7. The Peacock Room from a Victorian London estate can take you back in time.

8. The command module from Apollo 11, the mission that led to the first humans on the moon

9. A digital reconstruction of the Cassiopeia A supernova from the Hubble Space Telescope.

10. Photographs from the alcoholic specimen room at the National Museum.

• University of New Hampshire's autonomous boat, Bathymetric Explorer and Navigator (BEN), finds lost shipwrecks.
• BEN maps the ocean floor in spots that are too shallow or dangerous for divers or traditional ships.
• BEN has also been involved in the search to find what happened to Amelia Earhart.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

This bright yellow autonomous boat might be the key to unlocking the ocean's secrets. Built by researchers at the University of New Hampshire, the Bathymetric Explorer and Navigator is more affectionately called BEN.

The self-driving boat is used to map the ocean floor, and can assist crews in finding long-lost wrecks, like the famous Ohio in Lake Huron, as The Verge reported. BEN has been involved in other recent searches, and mapping the ocean floor can help improve understanding of the ocean and climate in other ways, too.

Here's what BEN looks like. 

Autonomous surface vehicles like BEN are used to gather data that divers and ships with crews can't reach.

It sends information back to the control room in the trailer on shore.

BEN is bright yellow, and about 13 feet long. It can travel for about 16 hours before needing to refuel.

In August, BEN set out to find answers to the disappearance of pilot Amelia Earhart in 1937.

The first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart sent her last radio signals from somewhere over the Pacific in 1937 during an attempted world flight.

BEN and the research vessel EV Nautilus went out to look for information on the ocean floor that might give insight about what happened to Earhart.

BEN was lowered into the water near the tiny island Nikumaroro in the South Pacific, about halfway between New Guinea and Hawaii.

Mapping the ocean floor is expensive and labor intensive, and scientists estimate we've only mapped 9% of the total area.

Source: MDPI

Equipment on BEN will collect data to create 3D topographic maps of the ocean floor.

Scientists think better knowledge of the ocean floor could help us understand climate change, improve safety at sea, and make it easier to create deep sea cables.

The crew of the Nautilus will use that data to target dives and hopefully find evidence from Earhart's flight.

A National Geographic camera crew accompanied the expedition this summer...

...and took some of these stunning photos of BEN off the coast of Nikumaroro. The crew searched for two weeks, but didn't find evidence of Earhart's plane.

BEN has been on other research expeditions, too.

These photos are from a mission in Pago Pago Harbor in American Samoa.

BEN was also used in Lake Huron's Thunder Bay, sometimes called "Shipwreck Alley" for its history of disastrous wrecks.

Source: The Verge