You never see them, but they're with you every time you fly. They record where you're going, how fast you're traveling and whether everything on your airplane is functioning normally. Their ability to withstand almost any disaster makes them seem like something out of a comic book. Known as the mysterious "black box," these flight-data recorders are actually not black but orange and when a plane falls from the sky, they're sometimes the only thing that can help authorities discover exactly what happened and why.
The June 1 Air France wreck in Brazil inspired the largest marine...