Have you heard the myth of the time traveling boat experiment? If so is there any fact behind it?

Question

The myth was told to me like this: It was called the Philadelphia Project and supposedly the government hired some of the scientists behind the Manhattan Project to make a time travel machine. The scientists constructed a miniature version of their time traveling boat. When they flicked the switch up the boat would disappear and when they flicked the switch down it would reappear. The scientists decided to construct a full sized version and loaded it with caged animals. Same thing happened when they flicked the switch, but when the boat reappeared the animals were out of the cages and fused to the walls and floor of the boat. The kicker is this: In the 1980s people reported seeing a boat appear out of thin air and then disappear. Has anybody else heard this myth? If so is there any type of evidence that might at least humor the idea of this really occurring?

Answer 1

There is a few problems with your version of the story.

It is scientifically possible to make something appear gone, but it is much more scientifically difficult to make something go back, or forward, in time, and prove it (going forward is beyond stupid, when you think about it.) How did the scientists know that the boat actually traveled in time, since the only thing that the experiment did, if it happened, was prove that the boat 'disappeared'?

Also, if you think of an object as being a really big jigsaw puzzle, with all the atoms and molecules and whatnot being arranged in a particular form, then if you 'break' up the pieces, to the point that they are no longer forming a coherent shape, and thus make the object appear to be 'gone', what happens if you force the pieces back together without actually figuring out if the method you are using will make them line up in order? Molecular activity is extremely difficult to control, in the sense of making the atoms form into the compounds that you want, and not form into compounds that you don't want. And living organisms have dynamic structures that are much more suceptible to 'bumps' in the transition than solid objects.

Also, every object and activity leaves a 'impression' on the film of existence. That means that every activity ever done exists as a ghost in the spot it occured. The space where your chair is, the one you are sitting on today, contains all the images and actions that have ever occured in that space. Why you don't see yourself sitting on top of previous images of yourself is because your eyes are not developed enough to see it. Was the appearance of the boat the boat itself, or was it a projection, and thus a ghost, of the boat, which meant that the scientists did not actually make the boat travel forward in time but instead sent it's image forward in time. Sending an image forward in time is alot different than sending the object itself forward in time?

Time experiments are beyond stupid. You can't travel backwards, and going forwards isn't going to change the person you are when you go forward, and you will get to that time naturally anyway, so why do it?

Answer 2

I've heard a lot about it and it's very interesting to think about even though most people would probably say it is just a myth. The evidence that it could have occurred or could yet occur is the real technology that the experiment was supposed to have been based on (the ideas and work of scientist Nicola Tesla).

Answer 3

I think its very real.  I believe they could send a boat to another dimension.

Answer 4

The Made a movie about it.  Nice bit of fiction called: The Philadelphia Experiment.