Vanished

This is one of a series of books examining various mysteries. This one deals with the alleged Navy experiment in 1943 in which a naval ship was made invisible. That part of the experiment was a success, but what happened in addition to invisibility was a terrible disaster.

This is the event termed the “Philadelphia Experiment.” Supposedly the military thought they might have a device which would enable them to render surface ships invisible. Such a thing would be incredibly valuable in a war, and World War II was a very, very rough war. The device made the ship invisible (except for the indentation in the water from the ship's hull), but supposed drove the men on board insane. Some were stuck in the metal of the ship, and some disappeared forever.

There's been various works on the topic, and the skeptics, of course, say that no such thing ever happened. This book is basically about that event, using a young hacker as the hook to hang the historical events on.

It's interesting to read how much the skeptics violently oppose the possibility of such an experiment ever taking place, especially in lieu of the actual real scientific advances that have been made quite recently along the lines of developing an invisibility shield around an object. Other experiments have been done relating to teleportation like in the Star Trek TV series. These are real experiments that have taken place and no scientist is arguing that they have, so why is it so totally impossibility that, over fifty years ago, the military might have tried a similar experiment?

The need was there, and at least some of the technology was there, although no where near the level of today's technology, of course, which is also a good explanation of why the experiment went so horribly wrong.

The book is not so much a young adult novel as a young adult introduction to one of a series of paranormal mysteries.

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