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Question about magnetism.

boomer6

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This may be a dumb question, but I am curious about something. How could one make a device (electro-magnet configuration) that actually does the opposite of an electro-magnet? Let me give you some background on this question. I do not necessarily believe in the Philadelphia Experiment, however, I do believe that the Navy did conduct experiments on the USS Eldridge to degauss (remove or neutralize the magnetic field) her hull. The reports are that insulated copper wires were wrapped (length wise) around the ship and some form of current was applied to the hull.

I do not know a lot about this stuff, but I thought if you added electricity to the wire you would make a magnet. (That is not something you would want cruising through an underwater minefield) I can understand why the Navy would want to repel mines from their ships. I just don’t understand how that could be done. (To either make an anti-magnet, or just neutralize the natural magnetic field.)

Can someone explain this in small words?
 
Glad that was helpful.

Forgot to add the URL to the Skeptic's Dictionary on the topic. It's rather fascinating to read about this widely-believed urban legend and how degaussing somehow evolved into a tale of a Romulan cloaking device or some such thing gone horribly wrong.
 
No no no, not a cloaking device, a time machine! Didn't you see the movie they made out of it?
 
I love how the story goes from trying to keep mines from hitting the ship, and maybe being able to hide from radar, to jumping 600k to another port. Then jumping back again, with a bunch of mindless fools, half of which were fused into the deck plating.
 
Ok, follow up question is, can one create a field that can distort Radar and light? How could that be done?
 
boomer6 said:
Ok, follow up question is, can one create a field that can distort Radar and light? How could that be done?
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This is too general a question to be easily answered. Just what kind of distortion do you want to do?
 
Well the USS Eldridge was used to play around with degaussing, but people reported her sort of "vanishing" "in and out" "there and not there". my thought is: a very large mag field was being used and it "distorted" the lights waves. Making the ship appear to vanish in and out of the here and now. Sort of like heat waves in the summer time. a road can appear to have a puddle of water on it because of the heat waves distorting the waves of light.

that being the case, what type of power and configuration would be needed to warp light using electro-mag power.
 
boomer6 said:
Well the USS Eldridge was used to play around with degaussing, but people reported her sort of "vanishing" "in and out" "there and not there". my thought is: a very large mag field was being used and it "distorted" the lights waves. Making the ship appear to vanish in and out of the here and now. Sort of like heat waves in the summer time. a road can appear to have a puddle of water on it because of the heat waves distorting the waves of light.
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Unlikely. Photons don't have charge. Electromagnetic fields only affect things with charge.

that being the case, what type of power and configuration would be needed to warp light using electro-mag power.
Click to expand...

For bending light, the only thing I can think of even theoretically would be acousto-optic modulation. I can't even imagine how that would be done with air, but Plexiglas works pretty well.

As for radar, it is ridiculously easy to defeat most types of radar. Radar-absorptive materials are the easiest, and there are plates at oblique angles. It's even possible to put a vibrating metal plate at the front of your car to defeat speed checks.
 
boomer6 said:
Well the USS Eldridge was used to play around with degaussing, but people reported her sort of "vanishing" "in and out" "there and not there". my thought is: a very large mag field was being used and it "distorted" the lights waves.
Click to expand...

My thought is that there's a much more rational, if not completely mundane explanation, and it's very important to distance the BS claims from what actually took place.

From the materials contained Skeptic's Dictionary resources I provided:

Edward Dudgeon, crewmember of the USS Engstrom

They sent the crew ashore and they wrapped the vessel in big cables, then they sent high voltages through these cables to scramble the ship's magnetic signature. This operation involved contract workers, and of course there were also merchant ships around, so civilian sailors could well have heard Navy personnel saying something like, "they're going to make us invisible," meaning undetectable by magnetic torpedoes.

The Eldridge and the Engstrom were in the harbor together. In fact our ships were outfitted at the same time: the 48, 49, 50 and the Eldridge, in June or July of 1943. The Navy used to de-gauss all the ships in dry dock, even the merchant ships, otherwise the vessels acted as bar magnets which attracted the magnetic torpedoes.

....

There was nothing unusual about the Eldridge. When we went ashore, we met with her crewmembers in 1944, we had parties, there was never any mention of anything unusual.

....

I was in [a] bar that evening, we had two or three beers, and I was one of the two sailors who are said to have disappeared mysteriously...

The fight started when some of the sailors bragged about the secret equipment [radar, sonar, special screws, a new compass, etc.] and were told to keep their mouths shut. Two of us were minors -- I cheated on my enlistment papers.

The waitresses scooted us out the back door as soon as trouble began and later denied knowing anything about us. We were leaving at two in the morning.

The Eldridge had already left at 11 p.m. Someone looking at the harbor that night might have noticed that the Eldridge wasn't there any more and it did appear in Norfolk. It was back in Philadelphia harbor the next morning, which seems like an impossible feat: if you look at the map you'll see that merchant ships would have taken two days to make the trip. They would have required pilots to go around the submarine nets, the mines and so on at the harbor entrances to the Atlantic. But the Navy used a special inland channel, the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal, that bypassed all that. We made the trip in about six hours.
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Additionally, from the Naval Historical Center URL linked above (emphasis mine):

Supposedly, the crew of the civilian merchant ship SS Andrew Furuseth observed the arrival via teleportation of the Eldridge into the Norfolk area. Andrew Furuseth's movement report cards are in the Tenth Fleet records in the custody of the Modern Military Branch, National Archives and Records Admnistration, (8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001), which also has custody of the action reports, war diaries and deck logs of all World War II Navy ships, including Eldridge. The movement report cards list the merchant ship's ports of call, the dates of the visit, and convoy designation, if any. The movement report card shows that Andrew Furuseth left Norfolk with Convoy UGS-15 on 16 August 1943 and arrived at Casablanca on 2 September. The ship left Casablanca on 19 September and arrived off Cape Henry on 4 October. Andrew Furuseth left Norfolk with Convoy UGS-22 on 25 October and arrived at Oran on 12 November. The ship remained in the Mediterranean until it returned with Convoy GUS-25 to Hampton Roads on 17 January 1944. The Archives has a letter from Lieutenant Junior Grade William S. Dodge, USNR, (Ret.), the Master of Andrew Furuseth in 1943, categorically denying that he or his crew observed any unusual event while in Norfolk. Eldridge and Andrew Furuseth were not even in Norfolk at the same time.
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"And we would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you meddling kids."

Mystery solved, eh? ;)
 
boomer6 said:
that about sums it up. good enough for me.:D
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Amazing how boring that is in comparison to the claims, isn't it?
Of course, the believers would contend it's all disinformation or part of the elaborate cover-up. :D
 
boomer6 said:
Ok, follow up question is, can one create a field that can distort Radar and light? How could that be done?
Click to expand...
A simple question. And it has a simple answer: No.

Both light and radar waves are electromagnetical waves. They consist of photons (or can be observed as a wave phenomenon, depending on conditions). Photons are chargeless particles, so they are not influenced by magnetic or electrical fields.

You can reflect, refract, and absorb EM waves, but you cannot deflect them. This means that you have to place some sort of object in the direct path of the waves to influence them.

The only thing that can deflect photons is a gravitational field (gravitational lensing). This requires an object with the mass of a star.

Hans
 
How about this: Huge magnetic coils set the hull, or some other aparatus in contact with the water, vibrating, which sends up a spray of mist around the ship, and from a distance the ship seems to "disappear". Or maybe something involved with the project produced steam or smoke which temporarily obscured the ship, or made it seem to blend in with the viewing background.
 
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