Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Nerd History: The Philadelphia Experiment



I mentioned in my post about the Chronovisor that I had really loved Bottled Demon by Matthew Rossi. This is one more topic that I'm borrowing from the book, the Philadelphia Experiment of 1943 where the US government allegedly teleported a naval destroyer from the Philadelphia Naval Yard to Norfolk, Virginia, and then teleported it back.

Yeah.

So the story goes, the experiment was an attempt to use Einstein's unified field theory to make a boat run more efficiently. The end result, however, was supposedly much worse - the sailors were made invisible, many went insane, and there were even reports of some of the crew being stuck in the walls of the ship.

This bizarre rumor became so prevalent that the Navy had to address it with a long form fact sheet, pointing out how the experiment couldn't have happened, providing ship logs, etc. This, of course, only drives conspiracy theorists even more batty, since, well, the government is totally in on it!

The Skeptic's Dictionary has a pretty detailed account, along with some extra information about the guy who pushed this mystery into the forefront. Also, this Skeptoid podcast about it is a lot of fun as well.

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