this episode of the wi files is brought to you by ship station Mike fired up the box and the lasers came to life the machine produced a small circular area of distortion it was a Vortex about 8 in across that looked like ripples above a fire this was unexpected Mike didn't know what the vortex was or if it was dangerous so he grabbed a sheet metal screw and tossed it through the field it vanished Mike just stared and blinked and waited the screw was just gone so Mike powered down his machine and turned to head back into the house then he heard something clattering it was the screw it rolled to a stop about 2 ft from the box Mike thought he invented some kind of teleportation device he didn't Michael madman Markham invented a time [Music] machine yeah human I'm glad you picked up listen I need two weeks off and I need to borrow your truck well I need you here for the next 2 weeks and there's no way I'm letting you borrow the truck again it took forever to get the smell out that wasn't my fault the gas station hot dog was tainted oh that reminds me I need any spare beavers you might have lying around I know I'm going to regret asking this but uh did you say spare beavers oh yeah my Beaver Virgil and Wyatt dick it rowdy Virgil and Wyatt those are to Earth Brothers I know who they are why do you what why are they name what are you doing Gertie and I had this great new business camel scented candles we call them candles get it yes I I do and you really think people are going to buy camel scented candles you kidding me we already got orders up to our Zoo that's why I need a truck and the time off we got to make all these runs back and forth to UPS and the post office and we just get into the holiday shopping season and Gertie's poor hump is sore from carrying all the boxes oh well we can't have that H between you and me I think she's exaggerating to get more hump rubs but what am I going to do I can't resist plus I got to deal with all these people calling about their 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holiday season with shipstation go to shipstation.com today and sign up for a free 60-day trial that's shipstation.com files that's it okay now about those beavers why just why oh camels are actually quite aromatic like a Musky vanilla which is a soup sa of laac and Beav you see they have these glands that make this gel so you have to express the glands to uh get the juice out express beaver glands hey you got rubber gloves don't you well yeah but I'm not going oh I got to go the Beavers are loose in the house again Virgil Wyatt get back here H Gerty don't let Morgan back in AJ's bedroom he really loves that [Music] pillow Mike Markham from stanbury Missouri was an amateur inventor who liked to Tinker he lacked formal science training but he had a natural aptitude for electronics the back por of his house looked like a home appliance graveyard old TVs radios and CD players were all dismantled with their insides spilled everywhere there were spools of copper wire and magnets of all sizes his current project was a Jacob's Ladder a device that consists of two metal rods which start close together at the bottom and spread apart as they go up this produces climbing arcs of electricity but Mike had an idea for a modified version of a Jacob's Ladder the first thing he had to do was create a Transformer more than meets the eye no no no an electronic transformer a Transformers are electronic hello how else do you think they defeat the Decepticons by talking sternly do you mind if I continue fine fine fine go ahead to get the Arc of the electricity going in a Jacob's Ladder you need a high voltage power supply typically in the tens of thousands of volts now in the United States the standard household voltage is 120 or 240 Vol that won't do so Mike built his own Transformer robots in Disguise sorry sorry it's out of my system now go ahead basically what you do is wrap two separate coils of wire around a common core one coil is connected to the power source so in this case the fuse box on Mike's house the other coil then has more or fewer turns in order to step up or step down the voltage so Mike sat down and just started coiling wire after about 400 turns he lost count but he coiled enough wire to step up his voltage from 120 volt to 20,000 volts now he's got his power supply for the climbing rods or conductors Mike actually used wire hangers no wire hangers ever ah somebody out there gets it how it's supposed to work is the voltage is applied to the conductors they electrical pressure then ionizes the air particles between the rods allowing current to flow The Arc starts at the narrowest point where the rods are closest together and then the heat from the ark makes the air around it hotter and less dense hot ionized air has lower resistance hot air rises and so the electrical Arc Rises along the conductors but the arc won't start on its own you need to initiate it manually by moving the rods closer together or farther apart it's touchy also if the air pressure changes it won't work if humidity changes it won't work air temperature movement even a little bit of smoke or dust in the air and it won't work so Mike had an idea what if he used lasers to heat the air around the conductors this would lower the air resistance ionize it and make the spark ignite on its own at least that was the plan so he removed the laser emitters from a couple of CD players connected his homemade Transformer and fired it up no spark it didn't work as he was going to disconnect the machine Mike saw something strange hovering above the device was a sphere of distorted air it looked kind of like the wavy Mirage you see over a highway on a hot day but this wasn't some powerful ball of energy it was hardly visible if you weren't looking for it you'd miss it unsure what this thing was or if it was dangerous Mike tossed a sheet metal screw into the energy field the screw disappeared Mike just stood there for a second confused he didn't know if the screw got vaporized or what happened then the screw fell out of the field and landed on the ground a couple of feet away now he repeated this experiment a few times with the screw and every time the same result he tossed the object in it disappeared for a second or so then reappeared out of the energy field now Mike didn't know if his machine was teleporting objects or possibly sending them a few seconds in into the future after a few more tests the machine overloaded the lasers were dead and the components were fried now even though all that was left of Mike's invention was a burnt out box of parts he knew he was on to something so now he would rebuild the machine but this time instead of it being 18 in tall he'd build it 8 ft tall and to do that he'd need access to a lot more power and Mike knew exactly how to get it [Music] Mike Markham was pretty sure he invented a time machine but to really test it he'd need to scale up his invention his prototype was only about 18 in tall now he wanted to go bigger scaling up the parts of the machine wasn't a problem bigger conductors and even bigger lasers were available the problem was power he needed lots of it his house gave him 120 volts he stepped that up to 20,000 Volts for the Prototype but his homemade Transformer blew out after just a few minutes if Mike was really going to scale and test his machine he'd need Transformers that could handle 50,000 volts or more without breaking a sweat basically he needed the kind of Transformer you see on power poles but those are not easy to get and they're not cheap Mike didn't have 15 to $2,000 to put into this experiment besides he'd need more than one or two Transformers he'd need a few so Mike had an idea a bad idea he knew there were six industrial grade Transformers just sitting in a yard doing nothing but getting rusty but that yard was a substation for the King City Missouri power company so Mike called a couple of friends with pickup trucks and in broad daylight drove to the substation loaded up the Transformers and drove away a few weeks later he had his next version of the machine the Transformers were connected to the grid new lasers were in place and the wire hanger conductors were upgraded to 4T long 1/ in metal rods this thing was a beast now the Moment of Truth Mike powered up the machine there was a loud crack a spark and then nothing his whole house went dark the new machine knocked out the power then Mike looked out the window he knocked out the power in the whole town it took some tinkering but soon Mike was able to get the machine running without causing brownouts all over town and the Machine it worked it created an energy field or Vortex a few feet wide so Mike sent objects through the vortex but this time objects weren't reappearing a few seconds later they weren't reappearing at all the objects were just Vanishing to who knows where one afternoon Mike had a few friends over and they were tossing small objects into the energy field they wondered could a big object go through yeah I'd like to say my ex-wife through well a few of Mike's buddies got behind the living room couch and pushed the couch went into the energy Vortex and was gone who yeah that was the good news ah yeah what's the bad news Mike's cat was on the couch at the time yes so what's the bad news so now everyone is just standing there in an empty living room staring at this whirling field of energy then they heard a pounding on the front door Mike opened the the door and there were eight deputies on the property the officer at the door had a search warrant Mike's neighbors had reported a lot of weird activity happening at the house and it didn't take long for police to put together Mike's project and report from the power company of a lot of missing equipment so whatever experiment Mike Markham was planning would have to wait because now he's going to [Music] jail for stealing the Transformers and stealing power Mike Markham got 60 days in jail and 5 years probation and while he was in jail Mike thought of different ways he could make the machine more efficient but there was no way for Mike to build any of this he lost his house he lost his job he was a pariah in his town because of the brownouts it seemed like Mike's time machine career had come to an end but then something happened his story made the news the headline was Kansas City man tries to build time machine on porch a Missouri worker set out to make a time machine on his back porch the contraption he came up with was not completely off the mark according to scientists there are theoretical physicists working on those areas and it's not total nonsense according to the chairman at the physics department at the University of Missouri at Kansas City the Stanbery police say the voltage that Markham had diverted into the contraption caused power interruptions in and around the Northwest Missouri Town of about 1300 Markham was arrested January 29th on a felony charge of stealing the Transformers from a power Generating Station in King City he pleaded guilty and last month was placed on 5 years probation police said the Transformers had a capacity of 12 to 76,000 volts each enough to easily cause electrocution or an explosion Markham who told police that he has 2 years of college level electrical engineering said he was building a time machine but didn't have enough power for it that's according to the Stanberry police chief Tom Hampton and that headline caught the interest of someone who had changed Mike's life forever let's go from the high desert and the Great American southwest I met you all good evening good morning good afternoon wherever you may be in the world's time zones all of them covered amply by this program Coast to Coast a.m. I'm artbell it is my honor and privilege to be escorting you through the second half of the weekend and what a program it is going to be tonight if you're building a time machine and you need help getting the word out there's no better person in the world to help you do that than Art Bell I set out to find young Mr Markham and I found him um Michael are you there uh yeah good artbell interviewed Mike Markham for about an hour and a half on the Coast to Coast radio show not only did Mike sound legitimate but he clearly had considerable knowledge and expertise in electronics and so did artbell let's say it's 400 turns in your primary and there's say there's 4,000 turns in your secondary 10 times the turns and then you'll get 10 times the voltage right Watts amps voltages stepping up stepping down art knew about all that stuff if Mike was faking it he wasn't going to fool our Bell well this was uh it was I was using were waves where I could actually it was easy controlling the duty cycle is easy to control the voltage that way right so cuz you can't find you can't really find it's hard to find varc rated at megawatts so man I'll tell you if you using square waves I bet the ham operators heard you for miles and he didn't try to fool anyone Mike came across as humble he wasn't looking for fame or attention in fact Art Bell is the one who tracked Mike down and convinced him to come on the air millions of people listened to that interview that night and before long people were calling in with offers some had Transformers they would donate others had property he can use and plenty of people were ready to financially support Mike in building a new bigger machine how do you feel about the possibility Michael of somebody coming along and being your Mentor even more than this maybe contributing money to build a great big gigantic version oh that'd be great that'd be like a dream come true for the next few days offers came in and Mike with his new team created a plan he corresponded with a few physicists and picked their brains about his technology and how it could be used for time travel several scientists helped Mike come up with an idea for a mechanism with rotating magnets that would make the machine easier to control so Mike got a warehouse all the equipment he needed and access to more power than he could ever use it took about a year but he finally built a newer larger and highly upgraded version of his time machine and you know what the machine [Music] worked it took almost 18 years but artbell was finally able to catch up with Mike Markham honestly art thought Mike was dead and I called you madman because I was convinced you were going to absolutely fry yourself alive and turn into a French friy there are other people who have been involved in time travel uh Mike that I've had on the show and honest to God Mike they're gone I I don't know where they are uh whether it's Teter or Anderson others that we've had on the show they're gone I mean they're gone but Mike madman Markham was very much alive and a lot had happened since the last time he and art spoke because of Mike's last appearance on Coast to Coast he suddenly had a lot of benefactors he had a little money equipment and lots of power Mike set up in a warehouse and over Park Kansas and there he built several iterations of his time machine the most successful version used rotating magnets so instead of having a small energy Vortex Mike was able to create what he called a plasma tornado maybe it'll be more efficient if I use instead of using uh basically heat from a laser in a cold room the differential the the temperature difference between those two to stir the plasma maybe even more efficient if I used the magnetic field to stir it that that's what I ended up doing use the magnetic field to do what um basically it's uh well in simple terms this thing looks like a basically a plasma tornado so how much power do you need to create a plasma tornado well remember Mike's first machine that prototype ran at 20,000 volts well his next version the one that ate the couch and the cat yep and what a waste of a perfectly good couch stop it anyway the next version used about 70,000 volts this new machine in the warehouse which is about 15 ft tall it was pulling 3 million volts that is a crazy amount of pressure pressure well in simple terms volts measure the pressure of force driving the electric current so think of electricity like a water hose amps are how much water is flowing through the hose or how much power is running through a circuit most households get between 100 and 200 amps of power well unless you got a grow room then you need a lot more power what did I say about this Tomatoes I was growing tomatoes anyway amps are the amount of power voltage is the pressure of the power so imagine taking that water hose and making the end of it smaller and smaller that increases the pressure of the water coming out of the end so even if you don't have a lot of amps you can still create really high voltage that's what a Transformer does so using juice from the power company supplement Ed by a couple of generators Mike had more than enough power to run his machine two cylinders one cylinder inside the other right with a magnetic with another basically a circle of magnetic uh electromagnets around it so basically you got uh a bunch of plasma like inside of it with a magnetic field rotating it you know what you are describing I'm I'm sure you've heard stories of The Philadelphia Experiment right yeah well they described a similar electronic setup uh with regard to the rotating magnetic fields art correctly pointed out that this is how the Philadelphia Experiment was done with high voltage and rotating magnetic fields in fact when Mike was arrested he told the police he was building a time machine now of course they thought he was nuts but several scientists said that if building a time machine was possible Mike's technology was on the right track because Einstein's equations do allow for time travel and they're blueprints blueprints for different kinds of of time travel designs that are compatible with Einstein's theory for example gigantic spinning cylinders you go around the cylinder and you come back before you left so now Mike started testing the Machine by sending objects through the vortex first with small objects like bits of wood baseballs and little things like that and they went through just fine but they just disappeared just like the couch and the C yet but they really didn't disappear they just ended up in different locations so what is teleporting stuff no the objects would go in and vanish and then about 2 minutes later they reappeared but the objects ended up between 50 and 150 yard east or west of the machine and always East and West never North or South Mike thought this could have something to do with the Earth's rotation or magnetic field and look I know the story sounds crazy I don't mind it but these tests were witnessed by 15 people anyone who donated money or equipment Mike let them be a part of the project and those people showed up I would have too and it's a good thing there are so many people on hand hamsters are fast uh wait did you just say hamsters yep the tests were so successful that Mike started sending small animals through specifically mice hamsters and guinea pigs no more cats no Ah that's a shame between the inanimate objects and animals Mike had successfully tested the machine about 200 times it seemed like varying the voltage and the speed of the magnets could adjust how far objects were traveling before long Mike could make a pretty good prediction of where an object was going to end up and how long it would take before reappearing so at this point there was really only one final test to try do you mean yep Mike stood in front of the vortex took a deep breath and jumped there was a flash of light and Mike disappeared now remember artbell had been following this project closely he was even planning a trip to the warehouse but when art checked in looking for Mike nobody had seen him he was just [Music] gone the media did pay attention and the media did including me nationally went on the air and said um madman is gone we can't find him [Music] when Mike came to he was not in the warehouse he was lying in the middle of a field somewhere with the worst headache he'd ever had and there was a big problem he had no memory of how he got there he didn't even know his own name so he got up and just started walking now it took some time but his memories slowly returned eventually he hit Fairfield Ohio a suburb of Cincinnati and Fairfield is 800 Mi due east of the warehouse in Overland Park Kansas but Mike had no driver's license or ID of any kind no credit cards no money so he went to the nearest homeless shelter to grab a meal and get his bearings when he got to the shelter he saw a newspaper he had jumped 2 years into the future Mike took a few odd jobs and got together enough money to take a bus back to his Warehouse in Overland Park when he got there the Warehouse was empty everything was gone the machine all the videos that he took of each test all his notes every bit of documentation was all gone Men In Black could have been the Men in Black or it could have just been the landlord who thought Mike was gone so he just sold the equipment or threw it away no way that stuff is still out there somewhere it might be now Mike was pretty sure he could recreate the machine he felt he could remember 90 to 95% of the process but it would take a lot of money the equipment in the warehouse was worth a couple of million dollars but Mike still had memory gaps he couldn't remember whose donors were his list of supporters was in the warehouse and that brings us to Mike's third appearance on Coast to Coast he caught artbell up on everything that happened and although he wasn't looking for money once again people were ready to help this one guy suggests I'm actually looking at the website now go go to tell him to set up a GoFundMe account yeah yeah Gund me or uh you know well that's crowdfunding right art also recommended that Mike pursue a book deal and Mike admitted that he's no author but if he teamed up with a ghost riter he could certainly cover all the technical details another suggestion was work with the government no what would you would you cooperate with them or the thing with DARPA uh well I don't have firsthand experience with them but I'm willing to bet they try to militarize every I mean basically the check isn't free and clear there's always strings attached I hear that smart man so Mike had options and our Bell encouraged him to keep working all right everybody that's it everybody in the world wanted an update on madman Markham and now you got it he's not going to stop what's next for madman only time will tell good night [Music] and Mike Markham would continue his research and continue to experiment Mike wanted to travel again but he needed to bring things with him so when he woke up he could quickly get up to speed in case his memory failed again a big problem he kept running into was that nothing metal could go through the vortex well metal could go in but it was unpredictable so sometimes metal would come right out like those sheet metal screws or sometimes the metal would explode in a shower of Sparks but after some trial and error mik discover that if a metal tube was built a specific way it would act as a faraday cage meaning that the tube could travel through the portal and reappear undamaged plus anything inside the tube would be unaffected including metal so Mike continued to document his work and built a pretty large following online one day Mike posted that he was ready to go through again and this time he would go through inside the tube and he'd take his cell phone with him that way he'd have everything he needs his notes photographs even money it was a great idea and that was the last anyone had heard from him as always Art Bell kept tabs on Mike and was disappointed to hear that he was gone again to where or when nobody knew but during one radio show art took a disturbing call the caller had found a newspaper article from 19 30 the article described a man who had drowned his body had washed up on the beach the article said he was found in a strange metal drum and the only object he had on him was a small rectangular device that nobody could explain the man had no ID so he was named John Doe but some people had a feeling his real name was [Music] Mike when artbell fans talk about their favorite episodes there are a few on everyone's list Jonathan Reed's alien in the freezer the man who flew over Area 51 the Mojave phone booth everyone loves mels hole mels hole is a classic and Mike madman Markham is on that list artbell loved time travel stories and nobody could weave a tale like art could the third interview artbell did with Mike was in 2015 and it's a master class in storytelling art already had all the information everything from the early days of Mike building a Jacob's Ladder on his porch Mike going to jail for stealing the Transformers the test with the animals the warehouse and Mike's 2-year jump in time but art teases the story out slowly nothing is spoiled he walks you through the story at the perfect Pace giving you just enough information to keep you hooked and we were hooked and look Mike Markham doesn't bring much personality to the story but art knows enough about electronics and physics to keep us in the loop and all the technical stuff and Art Bell never condescends to his guests he never ridiculed them he made them feel comfortable because art knew that's how to get the story I think this is one of the reasons why the Y files has success with these topics where many other channels don't I don't condescend or ridicule I don't talk down to you and no matter how Bonkers a topic is I don't ridicule it I don't have to believe a story to enjoy it and if you believe a story that I don't great so here's a piece of unsolicited advice to creators who cover these topics with a a snarky attitude you're making the story about you and that's a mistake so madman Mike Markham one of the best time travel stories ever but is it true well there's a lot of information about Mike on the internet that isn't true in his last interview with art Mike even debunks some of those stories like he never sent a cat through the portal but he did send the couch through but no cat damn and Mike addressed that article from 1930 where the man washed up on the beach in a metal drum I was thought it was a great twist but that never happened and there's a current story going around that Mike was still alive but homeless and died last year also not true now I don't want to dox the guy but Mike is still around and unsurprisingly it looks like he spent most of his career in technology but what about the machine well Mike Markham clearly knew a lot about electrical engineering when he built that prototype on his porch he was only 21 years old and scientists did say that his technology was on the right track now they didn't believe he could actually create a time machine but they said if a theoretical time machine could be built it would be done with high voltage and magnetism Nicola Tesla thought he could possibly see through time using electromagnetism and Einstein proved time travel was possible with gravity the higher the gravity the faster time moves and in extreme gravity like near a black hole time would move very very fast fast if Mike Markham figured out a way to create a Vortex of extremely high gravity in theory that would work it's already been scientifically proven you can use gravity to dilate time well basically I'm using electromagnetism which is 10 to the 30th time stronger right so I don't need I don't need basically a black hole to do this art Bell's audience called in with lots of questions and criticism but Mike was ready for all of it for example there's something with time travel stories that really bothers me let's say you had a time machine that could move you 10 minutes into the future okay fine you move through time but what about space the Earth is spinning 1,000 mph it's orbiting the Sun at 66,000 mph our solar system Zips through the Galaxy at over 500,000 mph and our galaxy moves through space at 1.3 million miles hour so where you're sitting right now in 10 minutes you'll move almost 990,000 miles in space time machine stories never account for this the Earth is always in the same place but Mike Markham does address this he says his machine stays in sync with the gravitational center of the earth so he's not only moving through time he's moving through [Music] space I've linked to all three interviews below you can hear Mike Fielding questions very calmly he comes across as humble and not trying to prove anything remember he didn't pursue Art Bell to tell his story art pursued Mike every time really the main reason to be skeptical of Mike markham's time travel story is he's here if I figured out how to time travel to the Future I'd do it wouldn't you but who knows Mike is still young maybe he's working on a newer version of his time machine I hope he is now people will roll their eyes at this story and say Mike's crazy but the world needs more people like Mike marham because when time travel is invented and I think it will one day it will be invented by a Madman thank you so much for hanging out with us today my name is AJ you know Heckle fish know the this has been the Y files if you had fun or learn anything do him a favor subscribe comment like share that stuff really helps us out and like most topics we cover here today's is recommended by you so if there's a story you'd like to hear or learn more about go to the Wi files.com tips and if you want deeper Dives on stories like these check out the yfiles operation podcast I release at least two a week and it's available everywhere you get your podcasts and if you need even more wi files in your life check out the wi files Discord it's a lot of fun and there's something like 20,000 people on there so there's always something happening 24/7 and it's free to join a special thanks to our patrons who make this channel possible I dedicate every episode to you and we could not do this without you and if if you'd like to support the channel consider becoming a member on patreon for as little as $3 a month you get all kinds of perks like access to these videos early without commercials Early Access to products like the Heckle fish talking plushy and two live streams a week just for you another great way to support the channel is grab something from the wifi store yeah grab yourself a Heckle fish coffee mug and then pour something delicious in there and sip it and drink it and then when it's empty stick your fist in there and then put on a heck ofish t-shirt and grab yourself a heck ofish tug and plus animal tucking fish style that's going to do it until next time be safe be kind and know that you are [Music] appreciated oh oh yeah I play Bia Scara 51 a secret code inside the Bible said I was I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music so singing like I should but then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth my friends and it never ends no it never [Music] ends I fear the crap cat I got stuck inside M's hole with MK truck I Fe only true where did Stanley curi fake the moon landing alone on a film set with the shadow people there throughout well aliens just fought the smiling man I'm told and his name was cold I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish fish on Thursday night Wednesday J all through the night all I ever wanted was to just see the truth to the one Su Fe off through the [Music] night the MTH man SIDS and the solar storm still come to a got the the secret City Underground mysterious number stations Planet are to project State and where the dark Watchers found in a simulation don't you wor the Black Knight satell lighted to me so I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish fish thday night J the night all I ever wanted was to just hear the truth so the feet all through night fish on Thursday night they J you and my me all through the night all what it was to just hear the truth so the B feet all through the Dan love dance love dance good love dance good dance good loves to Dan C love to dance on the dance ball because she is a camel and camels love to dance when the feeling is right on was in [Music] [Music] time
