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Philadelphia Experiment
The Philadelphia Experiment is the name given to a naval military experiment which was supposedly carried out at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, sometime around October 28, 1943. It is alleged that the U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Eldridge was to be rendered invisible (or "cloaked") to enemy devices. The experiment is also referred to as Project Rainbow.
[1] [2]
The story is widely regarded as a hoax. [3] The U.S. Navy maintains that no such experiment occurred, and details of the story contradict well-established facts about the Eldridge, as well as the known laws of physics.[4] Nonetheless, the story has captured imaginations in conspiracy theory circles, and elements of the Philadelphia Experiment are featured in other government conspiracy theories.
Synopsis
Note: Several different and sometimes contradictory versions of the alleged experiment have circulated over the years. The following synopsis illustrates key story points common to most accounts.[2] The experiment was allegedly based on an aspect of the unified field theory, a term coined by Albert Einstein. The Unified Field Theory aims to describe mathematically and physically the interrelated nature of the forces that comprise electromagnetic radiation and gravity, although to date, no single theory has successfully expressed these relationships in viable mathematical or physical terms. According to the accounts, it was believed that some version of this Unified Field Theory would enable the Navy to use large electrical generators to bend light around an object so that it became completely invisible. The Navy would have regarded this as being of obvious military value, and according to the accounts, subsequently it sponsored the experiment. Another version of the story proposes that researchers were preparing magnetic and gravitational measurements of the seafloor to detect anomalies, supposedly based on Einstein's attempts to understand gravity. In this version there were also related secret experiments in Nazi Germany to find antigravity, allegedly led by SS-Obergruppenfhrer Hans Kammler. In most accounts of the experiment, the destroyer escort USSEldridge was fitted with the required equipment at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. Testing began in the summer of 1943, and it was supposedly successful to a limited degree. One test, on July 22, 1943, resulted in the Eldridge being rendered almost completely invisible, with some witnesses reporting a "greenish fog" appearing in its place. However, crew members supposedly complained of severe nausea afterwards. Also, it is said that when the ship reappeared, some sailors were embedded in the metal structures of the ship, including one sailor who ended up on a deck level below that where he began, and had his hand embedded in the steel hull of the ship.[5] At that point, it is said that the experiment was altered at the request of the Navy, with the new objective being solely to render the Eldridge invisible to radar. None of these allegations have been independently substantiated to any satisfactory degree.
Philadelphia Experiment The conjecture then alleges that the equipment was not properly re-calibrated, but in spite of this, the experiment was repeated on October 28, 1943. This time, the Eldridge not only became invisible, but she physically vanished from the area in a flash of blue light and teleported to Norfolk, Virginia, over 200 miles (320km) away. It is claimed that the Eldridge sat for some time in full view of men aboard the ship SSAndrew Furuseth, whereupon the Eldridge vanished from their sight, and then reappeared in Philadelphia at the site it had originally occupied. It was also said that the warship traveled back in time for about 10 seconds. Many versions of the tale include descriptions of serious side effects for the crew. Some crew members were said to have been physically fused to bulkheads, while others suffered from mental disorders, and still others supposedly simply vanished. It is also claimed that the ship's crew may have been subjected to brainwashing, in order to maintain the secrecy of the experiment.
Philadelphia Experiment
Public dissemination
Resurfacing via literature
In 1963, Vincent Gaddis published Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea, in which the story of the experiment from the Varo annotation is recounted. Later, In 1978, the writers George E. Simpson and Neal R. Burger released a novel called Thin Air. While leaning heavily on known lore of the "Philadelphia Experiment", Thin Air is simply a thriller with no pretension of telling a true story. In the tale set in the present day, a Naval Investigative Service officer investigates several threads linking wartime invisibility experiments to a conspiracy involving teleportation technology. In 1979, Charles Berlitz and his co-author, William L. Moore, published The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility. More recently Simon R. Green included the myth in his book The Spy Who Haunted Me. Paul Violette's book Secrets of Anti-Gravity Propulsion recounts some mysterious involvement of the physicist Thomas Townsend Brown of the Philadelphia Navy yard.
Philadelphia Experiment
Evidence
Research into the supposed "Experiment" has revealed many contradictions and inconsistencies. In addition, no scientific support for the described phenomena or the purported events has surfaced.
Scientific aspects
The claims of the Philadelphia experiment contradict the known laws of physics. Magnetic fields cannot bend light waves according to Maxwell's equations. While Einstein's theory of general relativity shows that light waves can be bent near the surface of an extremely massive object such as the sun or a black hole, current human technology cannot manipulate the astronomical amounts of matter needed to do this. No Unified Field Theory currently exists, although it is still a subject of ongoing research. William Moore's book on the "Philadelphia Experiment" claims that Albert Einstein completed, and subsequently destroyed, a theory before his death. Moore bases this on Carl Allen's letter to Jessup in which Allen refers to a conversation between Einstein and Bertrand Russell acknowledging that the theory had been solved, but that man was not ready for it.[10] Also, shortly before his death in 1943, Nikola Tesla supposedly claimed to have completed some kind of a "Unified Field Theory". It was never published.[11]
Philadelphia Experiment These claims are completely at odds with modern physics. While it is true that Einstein attempted to unify gravity with electromagnetism based on classical physics, his geometric approaches called classical unified field theories ignored the modern developments of quantum theory and the discovery of the strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force. Most physicists consider his overall approach to be unsuccessful. Attempts by recent scientists focus on the development of a quantum theory that includes gravitation. Even if a unified field theory were discovered, it still would not present a practical engineering method to bend light waves around a large object like a battleship. While very limited "invisibility cloaks" have recently been developed using metamaterial,[12] these are unrelated to theories linking electromagnetism with gravity.
Timeline inconsistencies
The USS Eldridge was not commissioned until August 27, 1943, and it remained in port in New York City until September 1943. The October experiment allegedly took place while the ship was on its first shakedown cruise in the Bahamas, although proponents of the story claim that the ship's logs might have been falsified, or else still be classified. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) stated in September 1996 that "ONR has never conducted investigations on radar invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time". Pointing out that the ONR was not established until 1946, it denounces the accounts of the Philadelphia Experiment as complete "science fiction". A reunion of navy veterans who had served aboard the USS Eldridge told a Philadelphia newspaper in April 1999 that their ship had never made port in Philadelphia.[13] Further evidence discounting the Philadelphia Experiment timeline comes from the USS Eldridges complete World War II action report, including the remarks section of the 1943 deck log, available on microfilm.[4]
Alternative explanations
Researcher Jacques Valle[14] describes a procedure on board the USSEngstrom(DE-50), which was docked alongside the Eldridge in 1943. The operation involved the generation of a powerful electromagnetic field on board the ship in order to deperm or degauss it, with the goal of rendering the ship undetectable or "invisible" to magnetically-fused undersea mines and torpedoes. This system was invented by a Canadian, and the Royal Navy and other navies used it widely during WWII. British ships of the era often included such degaussing systems built into the upper decks (the conduits are still visible on the deck of HMSBelfast(C35) in London, for example). Degaussing is still used today. However, it has absolutely no effect on visible light or radar. Valle speculates that accounts of the USS Engstroms degaussing might have been garbled and confabulated in subsequent retellings, and that these accounts may have influenced the story of the so-called "Philadelphia Experiment". According to Valle, a Navy veteran who served on board the USS Engstrom noted that the Eldridge might indeed have travelled from Philadelphia to Norfolk and back again in a single day at a time when merchant ships could not: by use of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and the Chesapeake Bay, which at the time was open only to naval vessels.[14] Use of that channel was kept quiet: German submarines had ravaged shipping along the East Coast during Operation Drumbeat, and thus military ships unable to protect themselves were secretly moved via canals to avoid the threat.[15] This same veteran claims to be the man that Allende witnessed disappearing at a bar. He claims that when the fight broke out, friendly barmaids whisked him out the back door of the bar before the police arrived, because he was under age for drinking. They then covered for him by claiming that he had disappeared.[15]
Philadelphia Experiment
Cultural references
The Philadelphia experiment was the subject of a 1984 Sci-Fi movie of the same name. Numerous versions of the experiment have been featured in films, books and video games. The Half Life video game series' story of the Borealis, seems to be based off the story of the Philadelphia Experiment. The computer game Command & Conquer: Red Alert references this in a video regarding the Allied Chronosphere, in which footage is shown of a ship disappearing then reappearing seconds later. One of the commanders remarks that some of the men on board died and the process is still experimental. The experiment has been the subject of several television shows dealing with the paranormal and with conspiracy theories, including The Unexplained, History's Mysteries , Vanishings! and Unsolved Mysteries. It has been used in film and literature to explain time travel and non-linear plots, such as in William S. Burroughs novel Cities of the Red Night or the movie 100 Million BC. References to the experiment can be found in many other works, including The X-Files, season two episode nineteen Dd Kalm, Sanctuary, The Triangle, the Doctor Who audio drama The Macros, the collaborative novel "Green Fire" and the novels The Spy who Haunted Me [16] and Ship of the Damned. The experiment is also referenced again in Doctor Who, in the fourth Doctor Who:The Adventure Games release, Shadows of the Vashta Nerada. The date and name 'Philadelphia experiment' are referred to in the first game of the video game series: Assassin's Creed. The password to access the conference room is 10281943 [the date in American format] and an email also refers to the 'project'. An email to one of the characters in the game mentions that the ship, instead of turning invisible, "briefly manifested in a future state for approximately 18 minutes." The same email also says that the fictional company that engineered the project, Abstergo Industries, chose to drop the project, "citing paradox concerns."
Notes
[1] Carroll, Robert Todd (2007-12-03). "Philadelphia experiment" (http:/ / skepdic. com/ philadel. html). The Skeptic's Dictionary. . Retrieved 2008-02-05. [2] Dash, Mike (2000) [1997]. Borderlands. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press. ISBN9780879517243. OCLC41932447. [3] Adams, Cecil (1987-10-23). "Did the U.S. Navy teleport ships in the Philadelphia Experiment?" (http:/ / www. straightdope. com/ classics/ a2_293. html). The Straight Dope. . Retrieved 2007-02-20. [4] "The "Philadelphia Experiment"" (http:/ / www. history. navy. mil/ faqs/ faq21-1. htm). Naval Historical Center of the United States Navy. 2000-11-28. . Retrieved 2007-02-20. [5] History Channel : That's Impossible! [6] Moseley, James W. & Karl T. Pflock (2002), Shockingly Close to the Truth!: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-57392-991-3 [7] Introduction to the Varo edition of M. K. Jessup's Case for the UFO (http:/ / windmill-slayer. tripod. com/ aliascarlosallende/ id2. html) [8] Jessup, M. K. (2003) [1973] (pdf). "Varo Edition" THE CASE FOR THE UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT (http:/ / www. cassiopaea. org/ cass/ Varo-Jessup. PdF). The Cassiopaean Experiment (http:/ / www. cassiopaea. org/ cass/ ). . [9] "Al Bielek Debunked" (http:/ / www. bielek-debunked. com). 2008-01-14. . [10] The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility, William L. Moore, Grosset and Dunlap, New York, New York, 1979, pages 18-19. [11] "Prepared Statement by Nikola Tesla" (http:/ / www. tesla. hu/ tesla/ articles/ 19370710. doc) (.doc file). Pepe's Tesla Pages (http:/ / www. tesla. hu). 1889. . [12] See, for example here (http:/ / science. howstuffworks. com/ invisibility-cloak. htm) and here (http:/ / www. dukenews. duke. edu/ 2006/ 05/ cloaking. html). [13] Lewis, Frank (August 1926, 1999). "The Where Ship? Project: Though long dismissed by the Navy, the legend of The Philadelphia Experiment shows no signs of disappearing" (http:/ / citypaper. net/ articles/ 081999/ news. cb. ship. shtml). Philadelphia City Paper. . Retrieved 2008-02-05. [14] abstract of "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later" (http:/ / www. scientificexploration. org/ jse/ abstracts/ v8n1a2. php) by Jacques F. Valle, URL accessed February 21, 2007
Philadelphia Experiment
[15] abstract of "Anatomy of a Hoax: The Philadelphia Experiment Fifty Years Later" (http:/ / www. scientificexploration. org/ jse/ abstracts/ v8n1a2. php) by Jacques F. Vallee, URL accessed February 21, 2007 [16] http:/ / www. fantasticfiction. co. uk/ g/ simon-r-green/ spy-who-haunted-me. htm
References
Farrell, Joseph P. (2008). Secrets of the Unified Field: The Philadelphia Experiment, The Nazi Bell, and the Discarded Theory. Adventures Unlimited Press. ISBN1931882843.
External links
The Philadelphia Experiment from A-Z (http://www.de173.com) History of the Eldridge (http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/e2/eldridge.htm) Science Article about High Tech Materials that can funnel light around an object (http://www.sciencemag.org/ cgi/content/summary/312/5777/1120a) "Experts test cloaking technology" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6064620.stm). BBC News. 2006-10-19. Retrieved 2008-08-05. using Metamaterials Link catalogue for the Philadelphia Experiment and the Montauk Project (http://www.pxarchive.de) Site debunking the claims of one Alfred Bielek, allegedly an eyewitness and survivor of the Philadelphia Experiment (http://www.bielek-debunked.com/index2.html) Naval Historical Center's entry for the "Philadelphia Experiment" (http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq21-1. htm) Navweaps.com entry for the "Philadelphia Experiment" (http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-058. htm) Skeptic's Dictionary entry for the "Philadelphia Experiment" (http://skepdic.com/philadel.html) The Philadelphia Experiment (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087910/) at the Internet Movie Database 100 Million BC (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1136683/) at the Internet Movie Database The UFO and the Sailor (http://ufos.about.com/library/weekly/aa071000a.htm?once=true&) Robert Goerman's Alias Carlos Allende: The Mystery Man Behind the Philadelphia Experiment (http://web. archive.org/web/20020601165207/http://www.parascope.com/en/articles/allende.htm) Joe Turner's The Philadelphia Experiment: What They Don't Want You to Know (http://www.viewzone.com/ philadelphia.html) Straight Dope on the Philadelphia Experiment (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_293.html)
License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported http:/ / creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by-sa/ 3. 0/