The Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 black box may have been located. A ship has detected signals that may have been emitted from the black boxes of the missing plane.

The search is on for the location of the black boxes of MH370, USA Today reports. The signal was detected by an Australian ship for about two hours and 20 minutes late Saturday. It was detected again on Sunday for about 13 minutes. However, nothing else was found on Monday.

Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is leading the search effort for Australia, said it could be days before authorities can confirm that the signals were actually from the flight's cockpit voice and data recorders. "In very deep oceanic waters, nothing happens fast," Houston said according to USA Today.

The signals were picked up by the Australian navy vessel Ocean Shield which used a U.S. Navy device called a towed pinger locator pulled behind the ship at a depth of two miles. The device can detect signals at a range of one mile. This means the device would have to be almost directly over the black box to pick up the signal if it is coming from the ocean floor.

Ships are trying to determine the exact position of the signals so that a mini submarine can be sent deep into the Indian Ocean to try to locate the wreckage and find the two black boxes. Finding the black boxes would be a huge help in determining what exactly happened to the Boeing 777 that left Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board on March 8.

The plane was heading to Beijing but fell off the radar shortly after takeoff and disappeared. As of right now, the location is believed to be about 1,000 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia.

"Clearly this is a most promising lead, and probably in the search so far, it's probably the best information that we have had,'' Houston said of the signals. "I'm much more optimistic than I was a week ago."

Searches are now in a race against time as the batteries of the black boxes are only designed to last for about 30 days, so the signals could die out within a few days. Another obstacle is that the Indian Ocean is very deep. The ocean makes up more than 25 million square miles and has an average depth of two and a half miles. It also isn't clear where the jet may have come down, so the search area covers a wide area of almost 100,000 square miles.

With the latest detection of possible black box signals, the search has narrowed. The Ocean Shield is trying to pick up the signal again. "We are now in a very well defined search area, which hopefully will eventually yield the information that we need to say that MH370 might have entered the water just here," Houston said. "It's like playing 'hot and cold,' when you're searching for something and someone's telling you you're getting warmer and warmer and warmer."