Prompt Cast
The Philadelphia Experiment: A Conspiracy Theory Debunked
TLDR The Philadelphia Experiment, a conspiracy theory claiming that a Navy destroyer ship disappeared and reappeared, has been debunked by researchers who found no evidence and provided reasonable explanations for each part of the legend. The theory was likely fabricated and perpetuated by various individuals, gaining traction due to government and military involvement, secret scientific theories, and the publication of a book presenting it as fact.
Timestamped Summary
00:00
The podcast episode is about the Philadelphia Experiment.
04:39
The Philadelphia Experiment involved two separate experiments in which a Navy destroyer ship called the USS Eldridge disappeared and reappeared, causing the sailors aboard to be in bad shape and some to be molecularly disintegrated.
09:38
The Philadelphia Experiment, also known as Project Rainbow, is a conspiracy theory that claims a man named Carlos M. Aende made up the whole story and sent letters to an author named Morris Jessup.
14:35
An author named Morris Jessup received letters from a man named Carlos Allende claiming to have witnessed an experiment in Philadelphia in 1943, and although Jessup investigated the claims and found no evidence, he was later visited by researchers from the Office of Naval Research who had received a heavily annotated copy of Jessup's book from three people, confirming the existence of Carlos Allende.
19:28
The Office of Naval Research researchers paid out of their own pockets to find Morris Jessup and published an annotated version of his book on the Philadelphia Experiment, which only had a limited number of copies and was published by a military contractor called Vero Technology.
24:25
On the day of the supposed Philadelphia Experiment, the USS Eldridge was actually in Brooklyn, not Philadelphia, and a researcher named Jacques F. Vele disproved the experiment and provided reasonable explanations for each part of the legend.
29:19
The USS Eldridge was involved in a real project called degaussing, which aimed to de-magnetize the ship's hull, but it did not make the ship invisible to radar or otherwise.
34:05
The Philadelphia Experiment was likely fabricated by Carl Allen and has been perpetuated by various individuals, including Alfred Bialik, who claims to have been a physicist on board the USS Eldridge and to have time traveled during the experiment.
38:54
The Philadelphia Experiment has been perpetuated by various individuals and has gained traction due to the involvement of the federal government and military, the inclusion of secret scientific theories, and the publication of a book presenting it as fact in 1979.
43:25
The Philadelphia Experiment involved conducting a highly important experiment in broad daylight using a destroyer escort vessel, which goes against historical precedent and sanity.
48:08
The hosts give advice on starting a podcast and offer to be guests on Bailey's show.
Categories:
Society & Culture
