Mercer Center for Experimental Physics

The **Mercer Center for Experimental Physics**, known informally as **The Loop** and also by the acronym **MCEP** and the nickname "**underground**," was a facility that was built over the Eclipse, a spherical object discovered within the countryside of the village of Mercer, Ohio. It was built to harness this power to conduct experiments with fringe physics. In the wake of this, artifacts came to litter the landscape. The machine is said to have been built to unlock the mysteries of the universe - making things previously relegated to science fiction possible.

The Mercer Center for Experimental Physics was founded and directed by Russ Willard and his daughter-in-law, Loretta Willard, is employed there as a physicist. After Russ passed away, Loretta became the facility's new director. By the early 21st century, its experiments had advanced and it was producing hovercrafts.

It had a publication associated with it, the *MCEP Courier*.

## Known employees

* Russ Willard (Founder/director)
* Loretta Willard (Physicist, later director)
* George Willard
* Alma
* Danny Jannson (mechanical engineer)
* Ed (service engineer)
* Lucas (service engineer)
* Audrey (lab technician)
* Gaddis (security guard)
* Steven (security guard)

## Experiments

The following experiments and phenomena were all phenomena which were in some way associated with the experiments carried out at the Mercer Center for Experimental Physics:

* A house in which snow flowed upward from a pile on the ground and the house itself appeared to coming apart from the top up.
* A sphere, The Transposer, which had the power to cause two people to swap bodies when one stood outside it and the other climbed inside. It could also cause someone's consciousness to be trapped inside a robot if only the robot was near, leaving the person's body in a vegetative state.
* A stasis device which stopped time for everyone except those wearing the metal protective bands which came with it.
* The Echo Sphere. When one shouted into this sphere, the amount of echoes they heard gave a rough estimation of their remaining lifespan.
* The Scrapper, a large, remote-controlled robot
* Other robots within the town and the forest at the edge of it, including one in which the consciousness of the boy Jakob became trapped and another which attacked it.
* An unusual tractor which, when turned on, transported the person in the driver's seat to a parallel universe. Believed to have actually been the creation of the version of the Mercer Center for Experimental Physics within that universe, which, unlike the one in the main universe, was shut down sometime in or before the early 1980s.
* The Vagabond project, which created at least two androids, the Vagabond and the much more human-like Sarah
* The time stream, a mysterious stream. If a person crossed it when it was flowing, it would cause them to move outside the normal flow of time, such that 30 years would pass for them in just a few minutes and they would still be approximately whatever age they were before they crossed.
* Hovercrafts, which landed on the building's roof.

Mind Blowing Technology From Tales From the Loop Amazon Prime
## Behind the scenes

The Mercer Center for Experimental Physics and adventures surrounding it are the subject of the Prime Video series *Tales from the Loop*.

In the original *Tales from the Loop* book, the Loop's official name is The Facility for Research in High-Energy Physics, and is also often referred to as the Mäläro facility.

Showrunner Nathaniel Halpern describes the Loop itself as a storytelling-generating device and stated that if there were to be more seasons of the program, it would be an engine to tell seemingly endless stories and he'd like to use it to create an even bigger tapestry and sense of reality in the town of Mercer, getting to know the people there.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 What's On TV - Tales from the Loop on Amazon Prime...
2. ↑ YouTube - Behind the Scenes: Tales from the Loop | From Paintings to Screen
3. ↑ Deadline - ‘Tales From The Loop’ Releases New Trailer and Key Art...
4. ↑ "Home"
5. ↑ "Enemies"
6. ↑ Anderson, Jenna (April 28, 2020). Nathaniel Halpern on Creating Tales From the Loop, a Potential Second Season, and More. Comic Book.com. Retrieved on April 29, 2020.