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{{Short description|Disproven hypothesis}} | |||
Esoteric idea that the planet ] is actually hollow, almost invariably including the idea that the inner surface is habitable. Although at one time this idea was popular with some, it is now ridiculed by the scientific community (especially by geologists). | |||
{{about|the concept|other uses |Hollow Earth (disambiguation)|}} | |||
]'s 1892 science-fiction novel ''The Goddess of Atvatabar'']] | |||
{{Paranormal}} | |||
The '''Hollow Earth''' is an obsolete concept proposing that the planet ] is entirely hollow or contains a substantial interior space. Notably suggested by ] in the late 17th century, the notion was disproven, first tentatively by ] in 1740, then definitively by ] in his ] around 1774. | |||
It was still occasionally defended through the mid-19th century, notably by ] and ], but by this time it was part of popular ] and no longer a scientifically viable hypothesis. | |||
The concept of a hollow Earth still recurs in ] and as a premise for ], a subgenre of ]. Hollow Earth also recurs in ] such as the underground kingdom of ] and the ] and is often said to be inhabited by mythological figures or political leaders. | |||
There are two kinds of Hollow Earth theories: Concave Hollow Earth theories and Convex Hollow Earth theories. Convex Hollow Earth theories state that the surface of the planet we live is the external surface of an hollow planet. Concave Hollow Earth theories state that we and all the universe are inside a hollow planet. | |||
== History == | |||
===Ancient times=== | |||
In ancient times, the concept of a subterranean land inside the Earth appeared in ], ] and ]s. The idea of subterranean realms seemed arguable, and became intertwined with the concept of "places" of origin or afterlife, such as the ], the ] ], the Christian ], and the Jewish ] (with details describing inner Earth in ] literature, such as the ] and ]). The idea of a subterranean realm is also mentioned in ] belief.<ref>''Hollow Earth in the Puranas'' </ref><ref name="ReferenceA">''The Way to Shambhala'', Edwin Bernbaum, Anchor Books; 1st edition, 1980 {{ISBN|0-385-12794-4}}</ref> According to one story from Tibetan Buddhist tradition, there is an ancient city called ] which is located inside the Earth.<ref name="ReferenceA" /> | |||
According to the ], there were ] under the surface which were entrances leading to the ], some of which were the caverns at ] in ], at ] in ], at Ephya in ], at Herakleia in ], and in ].<ref>{{citation | volume = 1 | year = 1916 | first = William | last = Sherwood Fox | author-link = William Sherwood Fox | title = Greek and Roman | url = https://archive.org/details/mythologyofallra11gray_0 | page= 143| publisher = Boston, Marshall Jones Company }}</ref> In ] and ] legends, it is said that there are ] occupied by an ancient god called ].<ref>Mircea Eliade, ''Zalmoxis, the vanishing God: comparative studies in the religions and folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe'', 1959, pp. 24–30</ref> In ] there is a story of a man who, after traveling through the darkness of a tunnel in the mountain of "Mashu", entered a subterranean garden.<ref>''Myth: its meaning and functions in ancient and other cultures'', G. S. Kirk, 1970, p. 136</ref> | |||
In ancient times the idea of subterranean realms was arguable, and intertwined with the concept of places such as ] ], ] ], and ] ]. | |||
]. The bell tower stands on a mound that is the site of a cave which, according to various myths, is an entrance to a place of ] inside the Earth. The cave has been closed since October 25, 1632.]] | |||
In ] there is a legend of a cave called "]", also known as "Ireland's gate to Hell", a mythical and ancient cave from which strange creatures would emerge and be seen on the surface of the Earth.<ref>John A MacCulloch, Celtic Mythology, Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc, 1932, pp. 125–26</ref> There are also stories of medieval knights and saints who went on pilgrimages to a cave located in ], County Donegal in Ireland, where they made journeys inside the Earth into a place of ].<ref>T. Write, ''Saint Patrick's Purgatory : A medieval Pilgrimage in Ireland'', 1918, p. 107</ref> In ], Northern Ireland there is a myth which says tunnels lead to the land of the subterranean ], a group of people who are believed to have introduced ] to Ireland, and then went back underground.<ref>Harold Bayley, ''Archaic England: An Essay in Deciphering Prehistory from Megalithic Monuments'', 1919 Online Edition: </ref> | |||
In Hindu mythology, the underworld is referred to as ]. In the Bengali version of the Hindu epic ], it has been depicted how ] and ] were taken by the king of the underworld ], brother of the demon king ]. Later on they were rescued by ]. The ] tribes of ] claim that their ancestors emerged in ancient times from a subterranean land inside the Earth.<ref>Angami NagaBrown, ''Account of Munnipore'', 1968., p. 113</ref> The ] from Cuba believe their ancestors emerged in ancient times from two caves in a mountain underground.<ref>Ellen Russell Emerson, ''Indian Myths'', 1965 "It is to the Cubans we are indebted for the following version of man's origin: It was from the depths of a deep cavern in the earth that mankind issued."</ref> | |||
In ], John Symmes suggested that the Earth was actually a hollow shell about 800 miles thick, with openings at both poles about 1400 miles across. With charming candor he proposed calling the "inner lands" Symzonia. ] used the idea in his ] <i>The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym</i>. | |||
Natives of the ] believe that their ancestors had come from a subterranean land through a cavern hole called "Obukula".<ref>Philip Freund, ''Myths of Creation''; 1965, pp. 131–32</ref> Mexican folklore also tells of a cave in a mountain five miles south of ], and that Mexico is possessed by devilish creatures who came from inside the Earth.<ref>George, Wally –"Pilgrimage To The Devil"., Article in ''Fate magazine'', Aug. 1957, pp. 38–52</ref> | |||
In the ], an ancient German myth held that some mountains located between ] and ] hold a portal to the inner Earth. A Russian legend says the ], an ancient ] ], traveled to a cavern city to live inside the Earth.<ref>Clark B Firestone and Ruth Hambidge, ''The Coasts of Ilusion'', Harper & Bros; First Edition, 1924</ref> The Italian writer ] describes a hollow earth in his well-known 14th-century work '']'', in which the fall of Lucifer from heaven caused an enormous funnel to appear in previously solid and spherical earth, as well as an enormous mountain opposite it, "Purgatory". | |||
In ], it is said that the ancestors of the ] in ancient times emerged from a subterranean land through a cave on the north side of the ].<ref>Martha Warren Beckwith, ''Mandan-Hidatsa myths and ceremonies'', G. E. Stechert, 1937, p. 10</ref> There is also a tale about a tunnel in the ] in ] near ] which is said to lead inside the Earth to a land inhabited by a mysterious tribe.<ref>Grenville Goodwin, ''Myths and Tales of the White Mountain Apache'', 1939, p. 20 (Kessinger Publishing have reprinted the book in 2011)</ref> It is also the belief of the ]s of the ] that their ancient ancestors emerged from a subterranean world inside the Earth.<ref>William Martin Beauchamp, ''Iroquois folk lore: gathered from the Six Nations of New York'', I. J. Friedman, 1965, pp. 152–153</ref> The elders of the ] believe that a ] entrance in the ] exists which leads to the ].<ref>''Pages from Hopi history'', Harry Clebourne James, University of Arizona Press, 1974, Chapter 6</ref><ref>Arizona and the West, Volume 17, University of Arizona Press., 1975, p. 179</ref> | |||
], who normally did not stray far from the bounds of scientific plausiblity in his works, used the idea of a hollow Earth in his ] novel, <i>A Journey to the Center of the Earth</i>, and ], more concerned about entertainment than plausiblity, also wrote tales of adventure in the inner world of Pellucidar (including, at one point, a visit from his character ]). Burrough's Pellucidar is notable for the fact that, although the inner surface of the Earth is of absolutely smaller area than the outer, those areas which are oceans on the outer surface are continents on the inner and vice-versa, so that Pellucidar actually has a greater land area than the "outer" continents combined. It is also inhabited by primitive humans and by an exciting mix of all those large and dangerous creatures which have unfortunately become extinct on the outer surface, and to which Burroughs did not hesitate to add such improvements as the <i>Mahars</i>, creatures vaguely resembling large intelligent pterodactyls with dangerous psychic powers. Pellucidar is lit by a central miniature sun which never sets, so that the human inhabitants have never developed the notion of time. | |||
], who live alongside the ] in Brazil, claim that their forefathers emerged in ancient times from an underground land, and that many of their ancestors still remained inside the Earth. Ancestors of the ] supposedly came from caves which are located east of ], Peru.<ref>Harold Osbourne, ''South American Mythology''. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1986, pp. 42, 119</ref> | |||
=== 16th to 18th centuries === | |||
]'s hypothesis]] | |||
The notion was proposed by ]'s non-fiction '']'' (1665), which speculated that there is an "intricate system of cavities and a channel of water connecting the poles".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Stableford|first=Brian M.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uefwmdROKTAC&pg=PA138|title=Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia|date=2006|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-415-97460-8|pages=137–139|language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|137}} | |||
Other writers have proposed that subterranean caverns or a hollow Earth are the abodes of "ascended masters" of esoteric wisdom. ], ], ], and ] in ], ] have all been suggested as the locations of entrances to these subterranean realms, with some advancing the theory that these places are the actual homeland of ]s. | |||
] in 1692<ref name="Halley">Halley, Edmond, "An Account of the cause of the Change of the Variation of the Magnetic Needle; with an Hypothesis of the Structure of the Internal Parts of the Earth", ''Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society of London'', No. 195, 1692, pp. 563–578</ref> conjectured that the Earth might consist of a hollow shell about {{convert|800|km|mi|abbr=on}} thick, two inner concentric shells and an innermost core. Atmospheres separate these shells, and each shell has its own magnetic poles. The spheres rotate at different speeds. Halley proposed this scheme in order to explain anomalous compass readings. He envisaged the ] inside as ] (and possibly inhabited) and speculated that escaping gas caused the ].<ref name="halley2">Halley, Edmond, "An Account of the Late Surprizing Appearance of the Lights Seen in the Air, on the Sixth of March Last; With an Attempt to Explain the Principal Phaenomena thereof", ''Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society of London'', No. 347 (1716), pp. 406–28</ref> | |||
] in 1781 led a journey with hundreds of ] to a series of ] near the ] above the junction of the ]. According to Milfort the original Muscogee Peoples' ancestors are believed to have emerged out to the surface of the Earth in ancient times from the caverns. Milfort also claimed the caverns they saw "could easily contain 15,000 – 20,000 families".<ref>''Migration Legend of the Creek Indians'', Volumes 1–2, Albert S. Gatschet, Ams Pr Inc, 1969</ref><ref>''The Franco-American Review'', Volumes 1–2, the Yale University Press, 1938, p. 111. Also see ''The Venus Calendar Observatory at Aztec New Mexico'', Allan Macgillivray III, 2010, p. 25</ref> | |||
It is often claimed that mathematician ] proposed a single-shell hollow Earth with a small sun (1,000 kilometres across) at the center, providing light and warmth for an inner-Earth civilization, but that is not true. Instead, he did a thought experiment of an object dropped into a hole drilled through the center, unrelated to a hollow Earth.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Sandifer |first1=Edward |title=Euler and the Hollow Earth: Fact or Fiction? |url=http://eulerarchive.maa.org/hedi/HEDI-2007-04.pdf |website=The Mathematical Association of America |access-date=12 September 2021 |date=April 2007|doi=|pages=209–214}}</ref> | |||
---- | |||
=== 19th century === | |||
In 1818, ] suggested that the Earth consisted of a hollow shell about {{convert|1300|km|mi|abbr=on}} thick, with openings about {{convert|2300|km|mi|abbr=on}} across at both ] with 4 inner shells each open at the poles. Symmes became the most famous of the early Hollow Earth proponents, and ] even has a monument to him and his ideas.<ref name="atlasobscura">{{cite web|url=http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hollow-earth-monument |title=Hollow Earth Monument | Atlas Obscura: John Symmes Hollow Earth monument |publisher=atlasobscura.com|access-date=1 November 2015}}</ref> He proposed making an expedition to the ] hole,<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Simon |first1=Matt |title=Fantastically Wrong: The Real-Life Journey to the Center of the Earth That Almost Was |magazine=Wired |url=https://www.wired.com/2014/10/fantastically-wrong-journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth/ |access-date=18 September 2019}}</ref> thanks to efforts of one of his followers, ]. | |||
] also delivered lectures on the "Hollow Earth" and argued for an expedition. Reynolds went on an expedition to Antarctica himself but missed joining the ] of 1838–1842, even though that venture was a result of his agitation. | |||
Though Symmes himself never wrote a book on the subject, several authors published works discussing his ideas. McBride wrote ''Symmes' Theory of Concentric Spheres'' in 1826. It appears that Reynolds has an article that appeared as a separate booklet in 1827: ''Remarks of Symmes' Theory Which Appeared in the American Quarterly Review.'' In 1868, professor W.F. Lyons published ''The Hollow Globe'' which put forth a Symmes-like Hollow Earth hypothesis, but failed to mention Symmes himself. Symmes's son Americus then published ''The Symmes' Theory of Concentric Spheres'' in 1878 to set the record straight. | |||
http://www.literature.org/authors/burroughs-edgar-rice/at-the-earths-core/ | |||
] proposed a hollow Earth in his 1829 ''Elements of Natural Philosophy'' (pp. 449–53). | |||
In 1864, in '']''<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.weblitera.com/sync/?id=111&l1=4&l2=1&ch=30&l=en#.Wc6Gb4qQx3k | title=Jules Verne – Voyage au centre de la Terre – Chapitre 30. - Translation (French – English) – WebLitera – library of translations| date=31 March 2024}}</ref> ] describes an expedition into the Earth's interior via the fictional ]ic volcano Scartaris. The protagonists do not actually reach the center, but nevertheless discover a subterranean ocean inhabited by creatures believed extinct. They escape through another volcano on the Italian island of ]. | |||
], in his book ''Paradise Found – The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole'' (1885), presented his belief that humanity originated on a continent in the Arctic called ]. This influenced some early Hollow Earth proponents. According to Marshall Gardner, both the ] and ] had come from the interior of the Earth through an entrance at the ].<ref>''A Journey to the Earth's Interior'', Marshall Gardner, Mokelumne Hill Pr, 1974 Edition, {{ISBN|0-7873-1192-8}}</ref> | |||
/Talk | |||
=== 20th century === | |||
'']'', first serialized in a newspaper printed in Topeka, Kansas in 1900 and considered an early ]n novel, mentions John Cleves Symmes' theory to explain its setting in a hollow Earth. | |||
An early 20th-century proponent of hollow Earth, ], wrote '']'' in 1906. He supported the idea of a hollow Earth, but without interior shells or the inner sun. | |||
The ] writer ] in her book '']'' (1907) was an early writer to mention the hollow Earth hypothesis. She claimed that cities exist beneath a desert, which is where the people of ] moved. She said an entrance to the subterranean kingdom will be discovered in the 21st century.<ref>Paget Walburga, ''Colloquies with an unseen friend'', William Rider & Son., London, 1909, p. 36</ref> | |||
Marshall Gardner wrote '']'' in 1913 and published an expanded edition in 1920. He placed an interior sun in the Earth and built a working model of the Hollow Earth which he patented ({{US patent|1096102}}). Gardner made no mention of Reed, but did criticize Symmes for his ideas. Around the same time, ] wrote a novel titled '']'', in which the Hollow Earth possessed an inner Sun and was inhabited by prehistoric species. The interior was connected with the surface by an opening in the ]. | |||
The explorer ] wrote a book in 1922 titled ''Beasts, Men and Gods''. Ossendowski said he was told about a subterranean kingdom that exists inside the Earth. It was known to ] as ].<ref>Ferdynand Ossendowski (1922). ''Beasts, Men and Gods''. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company.</ref> | |||
] in his ''Anything Can Happen'' (1940) claimed the discovery in the ] of a cavern containing human skeletons "with heads as big as bushel baskets" and an ancient tunnel leading to the center of the Earth. One man entered the tunnel and never returned.<ref>George & Helen Papashvily, – ''Anything Can Happen''., Harper & Bros., New York, NY., 1940</ref> | |||
Novelist ] in his book '']'' said an underground chamber system exists beneath the ] of ], filled with ancient machinery, records and treasure.<ref>''Cave of the Ancients'', Lobsang Rampa, ], 1993</ref> ], a ], has linked ] and other ] ] to ancient tunnel systems underground.<ref>''There are Giants in the Earth'', Michael Grumley, Panther Books, 1976, pp. 42–47</ref> | |||
According to the ] writer ] a robot was seen entering a tunnel below a ] in Mongolia. Kolosimo also claimed a light was seen from underground in Azerbaijan.<ref>], ''Not of this World'', Sphere Books 1974 {{ISBN|0-7221-5309-0}} also see Peter Kolosimo, Timeless Earth, Citadel Pr, 1988 Edition {{ISBN|0-8065-1070-6}}</ref> Kolosimo and other ancient astronaut writers such as ] linked these activities to ]. | |||
A book by "Dr. ]" which appeared in 1964, ''The Hollow Earth'', exemplifies the idea of UFOs coming from inside the Earth, and adds the idea that the ] proves the existence of hollow worlds, as well as speculation on the fate of ] and the origin of flying saucers.<ref>{{cite book|last=Reece|first=Gregory L.|title=UFO Religion: Inside Flying Saucer Cults and Culture|url=https://archive.org/details/uforeligioninsid00reec|url-access=limited|publisher=I. B. Tauris|year=2007|page=|isbn=978-1-84511-451-0}}</ref> An article by ] revealed that Walter Siegmeister used the pseudonym "Bernard", but not until the 1989 publishing of Walter Kafton-Minkel's ''Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races & UFOs from Inside the Earth'' did the full story of Bernard/Siegmeister become well-known.<ref>Walter Kafton-Minkel ''Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races and Ufos from Inside the Earth'' ], 1989 {{ISBN|978-1559500159}}</ref> | |||
The science fiction ] '']'' promoted one such idea from 1945 to 1949 as "The Shaver Mystery". The magazine's editor, ], ran a series of stories by ], claiming that a superior pre-historic race had built a ] of caves in the Earth, and that their degenerate descendants, known as "Dero", live there still, using the fantastic machines abandoned by the ancient races to torment those of us living on the surface. As one characteristic of this torment, Shaver described "voices" that purportedly came from no explainable source. Thousands of readers wrote to affirm that they, too, had heard the fiendish voices from inside the Earth. The writer ] authored ''Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth'' (1998) in which he reprinted the stories of Palmer and defended the Hollow Earth idea based on alleged tunnel systems beneath South America and Central Asia.<ref>] ''Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth ''Adventures Unlimited Press, 1998 {{ISBN|978-0932813633}}</ref> | |||
Hollow Earth proponents have claimed a number of different locations for the entrances which lead inside the Earth. Other than the North and South poles, entrances in locations which have been cited include: Paris in France,<ref>''Alien races and Fantastic Civilizations'', Serge Hutin, Berkeley Medallion Books, 1975, pp. 109–132 – In the Bowels of the Earth: Refers to the mysterious catacombs beneath Paris, and other underground mysteries which lead inside the Earth.</ref> ] in England,<ref>''The Under-People'', Eric Norman, Award Books, 1969</ref> ] in Canada,<ref>''Inner Earth People And Outer Space People'', William L. Blessing, Inner Light Publications, 2008 Edition {{ISBN|1-60611-036-5}}</ref> ] in China,<ref>''Chinese ghouls and goblins'', G Willoughby-Meade, Stokes co, 1929</ref> and the ].<ref>''Mysteries of Ancient South America'', Harold T. Wilkins, Citadel Press.', New York, 1956</ref> | |||
=== Variations === | |||
In "]", Political scientist ] draws a distinction between the terms ''hollow earth'' and ''inner earth'', to differentiate materials that conceive the majority of the interior of the planet to be hollow, from those that view it as solid but ]ed with interconnected spaces.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Michael Barkun |title=] |date=2003 |publisher=] |isbn=0-520-23805-2 |page=207 |edition=1st |author1-link=Michael Barkun }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kafton-Minkel |first1=Walter |title=Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races & UFOs from Inside the Earth |date=1989 |publisher=] |location=] |isbn=9781559500159 |pages=44–55 |url=https://shwetathanki.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/subterranean-worlds-walter-kafton-minkel-100000-years-of-dragons-dwarfs-the-dead-lost-races-ufos-from-inside-the-earth.pdf}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Radner, Radne |first1=Daisie, Michael |title=Science and Unreason |date=1982 |publisher=] |location=] |isbn=9780534011536 |pages=48–50}}</ref> | |||
==== Concave Hollow Earths ==== | |||
] | |||
Instead of saying that humans live on the exterior surface of a hollow planet, sometimes called a "convex" Hollow Earth hypothesis, it is hypothesized humans live on the ''interior'' surface. This has been called the "concave" Hollow Earth hypothesis or skycentrism. | |||
], a doctor from upstate New York, proposed such a concave Hollow Earth in 1869, calling his scheme "Cellular Cosmogony".<ref name="wired">{{cite magazine|url=https://www.wired.com/2014/07/fantastically-wrong-hollow-earth/ |title=Fantastically Wrong: The Legendary Scientist Who Swore Our Planet Is Hollow | WIRED |magazine=Wired |publisher=wired.com|access-date=1 November 2015|date=2014-07-02 }}</ref> Teed founded a group called the ] based on this notion, which he called ]. The main colony survives as a preserved Florida state historic site, at ], but all of Teed's followers have now died. Teed's followers claimed to have experimentally verified the concavity of the Earth's curvature, through surveys of the Florida coastline making use of "rectilineator" equipment. | |||
Several 20th-century German writers, including ], Johannes Lang, Karl Neupert, and Fritz Braut, published works advocating the Hollow Earth hypothesis, or ''Hohlweltlehre''. It has even been reported, although apparently without historical documentation, that ] was influenced by concave Hollow Earth ideas and sent an expedition in an unsuccessful attempt to spy on the British fleet by pointing infrared cameras up at the sky.<ref>{{cite journal | last = Kuiper | first = Gerard. P. | author-link = Gerard Kuiper | |||
| title = German Astronomy during the War | journal = Popular Astronomy | |||
| volume = 54 | pages = 263–286 | |||
| date = June 1946 | |||
| bibcode = 1946PA.....54..263K | |||
}} See pp. 277–78.</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=William |last=Yenne |chapter=Adolf Hitler and the Concave Earth Cult |title=Secret Weapons of World War II: The Techno-Military Breakthroughs That Changed History |location=New York |publisher=Berkley Books |year=2003 |pages=271–272 |isbn=978-0-425-18992-4 }}</ref> | |||
The ]ian mathematician ] wrote several scholarly papers working out a detailed mapping of the Concave Earth model.<ref>{{cite journal|first=M.|last=Abdelkader|title=A Geocosmos: Mapping Outer Space Into a Hollow Earth|issue=6|journal=Speculations in Science & Technology|pages=81–89|year=1983}}</ref><ref>''Notices of the American Mathematical Society,'' (Oct. 1981 and Feb. 1982).</ref> In his book ''On the Wild Side'' (1992), ] discusses the Hollow Earth model articulated by Abdelkader. According to Gardner, this hypothesis posits that light rays travel in circular paths, and slow as they approach the center of the spherical star-filled cavern. No energy can reach the center of the cavern. A drill, Gardner says, would lengthen as it traveled away from the cavern and eventually pass through the "point at infinity" corresponding to the center of the Earth. Gardner notes that "most mathematicians believe that an inside-out universe, with properly adjusted physical laws, is empirically irrefutable". Gardner rejects the concave Hollow Earth hypothesis on the basis of ].<ref>''On the Wild Side'' (1992), Martin Gardner, pp. 18–19</ref> | |||
Purportedly verifiable hypotheses of a Concave Hollow Earth need to be distinguished from a thought experiment which defines a ] transformation such that the interior of the Earth becomes "exterior" and the exterior becomes "interior". (For example, in spherical coordinates, let radius ''r'' go to ''R''<sup>2</sup>/''r'' where ''R'' is the Earth's radius; see ].) The transformation entails corresponding changes to the forms of physical laws. This is not a hypothesis but an illustration of the fact that any description of the physical world can be equivalently expressed in more than one way.<ref name="gardnertransformation">On the Wild Side, 1992, ].</ref> | |||
== Contrary evidence == | |||
=== Schiehallion experiment === | |||
{{Main|Schiehallion experiment}} | |||
In 1735, ] and ] chartered an expedition from France to the ] volcano in Ecuador. Arriving and climbing the volcano in 1738, they conducted a ] experiment at two different altitudes to determine how local mass anomalies affected gravitational pull. In a paper written a little over ten years later, Bouguer commented that his results had at least falsified the Hollow Earth Theory. In 1772, ] proposed to repeat the same experiment to the Royal Society. Within the same year, the Committee of Attraction was formed and they sent ] to find the perfect candidate for the vertical deflection experiment. Mason found the Schiehallion mountain, where the experiment took place<ref>Davies, R. D. "A Commemoration of Maskelyne at Schiehallion." Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 26, NO. 3/SEP, P. 289, 1985 26 (1985): 289.</ref> and not only supported the earlier Chimborazo Experiment but yielded far greater results. | |||
=== Seismic === | |||
The picture of the ] that has been arrived at through the study of ]<ref name="press">{{Cite book | last1 = Press | first1 = Frank | last2 = Siever | first2 = Raymond | |||
| last3 = Grotzinger | first3 = John | last4 = Jordan | first4 = Tom | |||
| author-link = Frank Press | title = Understanding Earth | publisher = W. H. Freeman | |||
| edition = 4 | year = 2003 | location = New York | pages = 484–487 | |||
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=P8iEVK1yGKwC&q=%22structure+of+earth%22++%22seismic+waves%22&pg=PA484 | |||
| isbn = 978-0-7167-9617-6 }}</ref> is quite different from a fully hollow Earth. The time it takes for seismic waves to travel through and around the Earth directly contradicts a fully hollow sphere. The evidence indicates the Earth is mostly filled with solid rock (mantle and crust), liquid nickel-iron alloy (outer core), and solid nickel-iron (inner core).<ref name="usgs">{{cite web|url=http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/interior/ |title=The Interior of the Earth |publisher=pubs.usgs.gov|access-date=1 November 2015}}</ref> | |||
=== Gravity === | |||
{{Main|Schiehallion experiment|Cavendish experiment}} | |||
Another set of scientific arguments against a Hollow Earth or any hollow planet comes from ]. Massive objects tend to clump together gravitationally, creating non-hollow spherical objects such as stars and planets. The solid spheroid is the best way to minimize the ] of a rotating physical object; having hollowness is unfavorable in the energetic sense. In addition, ordinary matter is not strong enough to support a hollow shape of planetary size against the force of gravity; a planet-sized hollow shell with the known, observed thickness of the Earth's crust would not be able to achieve ] with its own mass and would collapse.{{cn|date=November 2024}} | |||
Based upon the size of the Earth and the force of gravity on its surface, the average density of the planet Earth is 5.515 g/cm<sup>3</sup>, and typical densities of surface rocks are only half that (about 2.75 g/cm<sup>3</sup>). If any significant portion of the Earth were hollow, the average density would be much lower than that of surface rocks. The only way for Earth to have the force of gravity that it does is for much more dense material to make up a large part of the interior. Nickel-iron alloy under the conditions expected in a non-hollow Earth would have densities ranging from about 10 to 13 g/cm<sup>3</sup>, which brings the average density of Earth to its observed value.<ref>Lowrie, W., & Fichtner, A. (2020). Fundamentals of geophysics. Cambridge university press.</ref>{{rp|186}} | |||
=== Direct observation === | |||
Drilling holes does not provide direct evidence against the hypothesis. The deepest hole drilled to date is the ],<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.iflscience.com/environment/deepest-hole-world/|title=What's At The Bottom Of The Deepest Hole On Earth?|date=11 March 2016 |access-date=2016-08-17}}</ref> with a true vertical drill-depth of around {{convert|12|km|mi|abbr=on}}. However, the distance to the center of the Earth is nearly {{convert|6400|km|mi|abbr=on}}.<ref name="...">{{Cite arXiv |eprint=1510.07674 |last1=Mamajek |first1=E. E. |last2=Prsa |first2=A. |last3=Torres |first3=G. |last4=Harmanec |first4=P. |last5=Asplund |first5=M. |last6=Bennett |first6=P. D. |last7=Capitaine |first7=N. |last8=Christensen-Dalsgaard |first8=J. |last9=Depagne |first9=E. |last10=Folkner |first10=W. M. |last11=Haberreiter |first11=M. |last12=Hekker |first12=S. |last13=Hilton |first13=J. L. |last14=Kostov |first14=V. |last15=Kurtz |first15=D. W. |last16=Laskar |first16=J. |last17=Mason |first17=B. D. |last18=Milone |first18=E. F. |last19=Montgomery |first19=M. M. |last20=Richards |first20=M. T. |last21=Schou |first21=J. |last22=Stewart |first22=S. G. |title=IAU 2015 Resolution B3 on Recommended Nominal Conversion Constants for Selected Solar and Planetary Properties |date=2015 |class=astro-ph.SR }}</ref> | |||
== In fiction == | |||
{{Main|Subterranean fiction}} | |||
The idea of a hollow Earth is a common element of fiction, appearing as early as ]'s 1741 novel ''Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum'' («'']''»), in which Nicolai Klim falls through a cave while spelunking and spends several years living on both a smaller globe within and the inside of the outer shell. | |||
Other notable early examples include ]'s 1788 ''Icosaméron'', a 5-volume, 1,800-page story of a brother and sister who fall into the Earth and discover the subterranean utopia of the Mégamicres, a race of multicolored, hermaphroditic dwarves; '']'' by a "Captain Adam Seaborn" (1820) which reflected the ideas of John Cleves Symmes, Jr.; ]'s 1838 novel ''];'' Jules Verne's 1864 novel ''],'' which showed a subterranean world teeming with prehistoric life; ]'s 1864 novel ''Laura, Voyage dans le Cristal'' where giant ]s could be found in the interior of the Earth; ]'s novel '']'', published anonymously in 1871; '']'', an 1895 science-fiction allegory with major subterranean themes; and '']'', a 1908 novel that included the idea that the North Pole was the entrance to the hollow planet. | |||
In ]'s ] romance, '']'',<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hudson |first1=William Henry |title=A Crystal Age |date=1887 |publisher=T. Fisher Unwin |location=London |url=https://literaryrescue.org/b/twpZh |access-date=23 August 2024}}</ref> the protagonist falls down a hill into a ] paradise; since he falls into this world, it is sometimes classified as a hollow Earth story; although the hero himself thinks he may have ] by millennia. | |||
The idea was used by ] in the seven-novel "]" series, beginning with '']'' (1914). Using a mechanical drill, called the Iron Mole, his heroes ] and Professor ] discover a prehistoric world called Pellucidar, 500 miles below the surface, that is lit by a constant noonday inner sun. They find prehistoric people, dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals and the ], who evolved from pterosaurs. The series ran for six more books, ending with '']'' (1963).<ref> | |||
, by Edgar Rice Burroughs</ref> The 1915 novel ''] ''by ] uses the concept of the Hollow Earth to take the reader through various geological epochs. | |||
In recent decades, the idea has become a staple of the science fiction and adventure genres across films ('']'', '']'', '']'' and the ]), television programs ('']'', '']'', and the third and fourth seasons of '']''), ]s (e.g., the ] for '']'', '']''), and video games ('']'' and '']''). The idea is also partially used in the ] universe, where there exists a subterranean realm beneath the Earth known as ]. The ] (SNES) video game '']'' features this concept in the opening and closing acts of the game. | |||
The Hollow Earth is a key location in ]'s ] franchise, being the point of origin of the ] and the ] of ]. Initially being teased in '']'' and '']'', a full expedition into the Hollow Earth is a primary focus of '']'', its sequel '']'', and the '']'' ]. | |||
==In popular art== | |||
In 1975, Japanese artist ] used elements of the ] legend, along with other ] subterranean myths, to depict an advanced civilization in the cover art for jazz musician ]'s album '']''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Buchwald|first=Dagmar|chapter=Black Sun Underground: The Music of AlieNation|year=2012|editor1-first=Hanjo|editor1-last=Berressem|editor2-first=Michael|editor2-last=Bucher|editor3-first=Uwe|editor3-last=Schwagmeier|title=Between Science and Fiction: The Hollow Earth as Concept and Conceit|publisher=LIT Verlag Munster|isbn=978-3-643-90228-3|page=109}}</ref> Tadanori said he was partly inspired by his reading of ]'s 1969 book ''The Hollow Earth''.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Thorgerson|first1=Storm|author-link1=Storm Thorgerson|last2=Powell|first2=Aubrey|author-link2=Aubrey Powell (designer)|year=1999|title=100 Best Album Covers|publisher=]|isbn=0-7894-4951-X|page=20}}</ref> | |||
== See also == | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
== Citations == | |||
{{Reflist|30em}} | |||
== General and cited references == | |||
* Kafton-Minkel, Walter. ''Subterranean Worlds''. Loompanics Unlimited, 1989. | |||
* Lamprecht, Jan. ''Hollow Planets: A Feasibility Study of Possible Hollow Worlds'' Grave Distraction Publications, 2014. | |||
* Lewis, David. ''The Incredible Cities of Inner Earth''. Science Research Publishing House, 1979. | |||
* Seaborn, Captain Adam. ''Symzonia; Voyage of Discovery''. J. Seymour, 1820. | |||
* Standish, David. ''Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth's Surface''. Da Capo Press, 2006. | |||
== External links == | |||
* '''' | |||
* '''' | |||
* '''' Public Domain Review | |||
* '''' | |||
* "", '']'', 13 July 1878, p. 20 | |||
* | |||
{{Pseudoscience}} | |||
{{Subterranea}} | |||
{{Authority control}} | |||
] | |||
] | |||
] | |||
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]<!-- concave hollow Earth --> |
Latest revision as of 18:11, 2 December 2024
Disproven hypothesis This article is about the concept. For other uses, see Hollow Earth (disambiguation).The Hollow Earth is an obsolete concept proposing that the planet Earth is entirely hollow or contains a substantial interior space. Notably suggested by Edmond Halley in the late 17th century, the notion was disproven, first tentatively by Pierre Bouguer in 1740, then definitively by Charles Hutton in his Schiehallion experiment around 1774.
It was still occasionally defended through the mid-19th century, notably by John Cleves Symmes Jr. and J. N. Reynolds, but by this time it was part of popular pseudoscience and no longer a scientifically viable hypothesis.
The concept of a hollow Earth still recurs in folklore and as a premise for subterranean fiction, a subgenre of adventure fiction. Hollow Earth also recurs in conspiracy theories such as the underground kingdom of Agartha and the Cryptoterrestrial hypothesis and is often said to be inhabited by mythological figures or political leaders.
History
Ancient times
In ancient times, the concept of a subterranean land inside the Earth appeared in mythology, folklore and legends. The idea of subterranean realms seemed arguable, and became intertwined with the concept of "places" of origin or afterlife, such as the Greek underworld, the Nordic Svartálfaheimr, the Christian Hell, and the Jewish Sheol (with details describing inner Earth in Kabalistic literature, such as the Zohar and Hesed L'Avraham). The idea of a subterranean realm is also mentioned in Tibetan Buddhist belief. According to one story from Tibetan Buddhist tradition, there is an ancient city called Shamballa which is located inside the Earth.
According to the Ancient Greeks, there were caverns under the surface which were entrances leading to the underworld, some of which were the caverns at Tainaron in Lakonia, at Troezen in Argolis, at Ephya in Thesprotia, at Herakleia in Pontos, and in Ermioni. In Thracian and Dacian legends, it is said that there are caverns occupied by an ancient god called Zalmoxis. In Mesopotamian religion there is a story of a man who, after traveling through the darkness of a tunnel in the mountain of "Mashu", entered a subterranean garden.
In Celtic mythology there is a legend of a cave called "Cruachan", also known as "Ireland's gate to Hell", a mythical and ancient cave from which strange creatures would emerge and be seen on the surface of the Earth. There are also stories of medieval knights and saints who went on pilgrimages to a cave located in Station Island, County Donegal in Ireland, where they made journeys inside the Earth into a place of purgatory. In County Down, Northern Ireland there is a myth which says tunnels lead to the land of the subterranean Tuatha Dé Danann, a group of people who are believed to have introduced Druidism to Ireland, and then went back underground.
In Hindu mythology, the underworld is referred to as Patala. In the Bengali version of the Hindu epic Ramayana, it has been depicted how Rama and Lakshmana were taken by the king of the underworld Ahiravan, brother of the demon king Ravana. Later on they were rescued by Hanuman. The Angami Naga tribes of India claim that their ancestors emerged in ancient times from a subterranean land inside the Earth. The Taino from Cuba believe their ancestors emerged in ancient times from two caves in a mountain underground.
Natives of the Trobriand Islands believe that their ancestors had come from a subterranean land through a cavern hole called "Obukula". Mexican folklore also tells of a cave in a mountain five miles south of Ojinaga, and that Mexico is possessed by devilish creatures who came from inside the Earth.
In the Middle Ages, an ancient German myth held that some mountains located between Eisenach and Gotha hold a portal to the inner Earth. A Russian legend says the Samoyeds, an ancient Siberian tribe, traveled to a cavern city to live inside the Earth. The Italian writer Dante describes a hollow earth in his well-known 14th-century work Inferno, in which the fall of Lucifer from heaven caused an enormous funnel to appear in previously solid and spherical earth, as well as an enormous mountain opposite it, "Purgatory".
In Native American mythology, it is said that the ancestors of the Mandan people in ancient times emerged from a subterranean land through a cave on the north side of the Missouri River. There is also a tale about a tunnel in the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona near Cedar Creek which is said to lead inside the Earth to a land inhabited by a mysterious tribe. It is also the belief of the tribes of the Iroquois that their ancient ancestors emerged from a subterranean world inside the Earth. The elders of the Hopi people believe that a Sipapu entrance in the Grand Canyon exists which leads to the underworld.
Brazilian Indians, who live alongside the Parima River in Brazil, claim that their forefathers emerged in ancient times from an underground land, and that many of their ancestors still remained inside the Earth. Ancestors of the Inca supposedly came from caves which are located east of Cuzco, Peru.
16th to 18th centuries
The notion was proposed by Athanasius Kircher's non-fiction Mundus Subterraneus (1665), which speculated that there is an "intricate system of cavities and a channel of water connecting the poles".
Edmond Halley in 1692 conjectured that the Earth might consist of a hollow shell about 800 km (500 mi) thick, two inner concentric shells and an innermost core. Atmospheres separate these shells, and each shell has its own magnetic poles. The spheres rotate at different speeds. Halley proposed this scheme in order to explain anomalous compass readings. He envisaged the atmosphere inside as luminous (and possibly inhabited) and speculated that escaping gas caused the Aurora Borealis.
Le Clerc Milfort in 1781 led a journey with hundreds of Muscogee Peoples to a series of caverns near the Red River above the junction of the Mississippi River. According to Milfort the original Muscogee Peoples' ancestors are believed to have emerged out to the surface of the Earth in ancient times from the caverns. Milfort also claimed the caverns they saw "could easily contain 15,000 – 20,000 families".
It is often claimed that mathematician Leonhard Euler proposed a single-shell hollow Earth with a small sun (1,000 kilometres across) at the center, providing light and warmth for an inner-Earth civilization, but that is not true. Instead, he did a thought experiment of an object dropped into a hole drilled through the center, unrelated to a hollow Earth.
19th century
In 1818, John Cleves Symmes, Jr. suggested that the Earth consisted of a hollow shell about 1,300 km (810 mi) thick, with openings about 2,300 km (1,400 mi) across at both poles with 4 inner shells each open at the poles. Symmes became the most famous of the early Hollow Earth proponents, and Hamilton, Ohio even has a monument to him and his ideas. He proposed making an expedition to the North Pole hole, thanks to efforts of one of his followers, James McBride.
J. N. Reynolds also delivered lectures on the "Hollow Earth" and argued for an expedition. Reynolds went on an expedition to Antarctica himself but missed joining the Great U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842, even though that venture was a result of his agitation.
Though Symmes himself never wrote a book on the subject, several authors published works discussing his ideas. McBride wrote Symmes' Theory of Concentric Spheres in 1826. It appears that Reynolds has an article that appeared as a separate booklet in 1827: Remarks of Symmes' Theory Which Appeared in the American Quarterly Review. In 1868, professor W.F. Lyons published The Hollow Globe which put forth a Symmes-like Hollow Earth hypothesis, but failed to mention Symmes himself. Symmes's son Americus then published The Symmes' Theory of Concentric Spheres in 1878 to set the record straight.
Sir John Leslie proposed a hollow Earth in his 1829 Elements of Natural Philosophy (pp. 449–53).
In 1864, in Journey to the Center of the Earth Jules Verne describes an expedition into the Earth's interior via the fictional Icelandic volcano Scartaris. The protagonists do not actually reach the center, but nevertheless discover a subterranean ocean inhabited by creatures believed extinct. They escape through another volcano on the Italian island of Stromboli.
William Fairfield Warren, in his book Paradise Found – The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole (1885), presented his belief that humanity originated on a continent in the Arctic called Hyperborea. This influenced some early Hollow Earth proponents. According to Marshall Gardner, both the Eskimo and Mongolian peoples had come from the interior of the Earth through an entrance at the North Pole.
20th century
NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages, first serialized in a newspaper printed in Topeka, Kansas in 1900 and considered an early feminist utopian novel, mentions John Cleves Symmes' theory to explain its setting in a hollow Earth.
An early 20th-century proponent of hollow Earth, William Reed, wrote Phantom of the Poles in 1906. He supported the idea of a hollow Earth, but without interior shells or the inner sun.
The spiritualist writer Walburga, Lady Paget in her book Colloquies with an unseen friend (1907) was an early writer to mention the hollow Earth hypothesis. She claimed that cities exist beneath a desert, which is where the people of Atlantis moved. She said an entrance to the subterranean kingdom will be discovered in the 21st century.
Marshall Gardner wrote A Journey to the Earth's Interior in 1913 and published an expanded edition in 1920. He placed an interior sun in the Earth and built a working model of the Hollow Earth which he patented (U.S. patent 1,096,102). Gardner made no mention of Reed, but did criticize Symmes for his ideas. Around the same time, Vladimir Obruchev wrote a novel titled Plutonia, in which the Hollow Earth possessed an inner Sun and was inhabited by prehistoric species. The interior was connected with the surface by an opening in the Arctic.
The explorer Ferdynand Ossendowski wrote a book in 1922 titled Beasts, Men and Gods. Ossendowski said he was told about a subterranean kingdom that exists inside the Earth. It was known to Buddhists as Agharti.
George Papashvily in his Anything Can Happen (1940) claimed the discovery in the Caucasus Mountains of a cavern containing human skeletons "with heads as big as bushel baskets" and an ancient tunnel leading to the center of the Earth. One man entered the tunnel and never returned.
Novelist Lobsang Rampa in his book The Cave of the Ancients said an underground chamber system exists beneath the Himalayas of Tibet, filled with ancient machinery, records and treasure. Michael Grumley, a cryptozoologist, has linked Bigfoot and other hominid cryptids to ancient tunnel systems underground.
According to the ancient astronaut writer Peter Kolosimo a robot was seen entering a tunnel below a monastery in Mongolia. Kolosimo also claimed a light was seen from underground in Azerbaijan. Kolosimo and other ancient astronaut writers such as Robert Charroux linked these activities to UFOs.
A book by "Dr. Raymond Bernard" which appeared in 1964, The Hollow Earth, exemplifies the idea of UFOs coming from inside the Earth, and adds the idea that the Ring Nebula proves the existence of hollow worlds, as well as speculation on the fate of Atlantis and the origin of flying saucers. An article by Martin Gardner revealed that Walter Siegmeister used the pseudonym "Bernard", but not until the 1989 publishing of Walter Kafton-Minkel's Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races & UFOs from Inside the Earth did the full story of Bernard/Siegmeister become well-known.
The science fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories promoted one such idea from 1945 to 1949 as "The Shaver Mystery". The magazine's editor, Ray Palmer, ran a series of stories by Richard Sharpe Shaver, claiming that a superior pre-historic race had built a honeycomb of caves in the Earth, and that their degenerate descendants, known as "Dero", live there still, using the fantastic machines abandoned by the ancient races to torment those of us living on the surface. As one characteristic of this torment, Shaver described "voices" that purportedly came from no explainable source. Thousands of readers wrote to affirm that they, too, had heard the fiendish voices from inside the Earth. The writer David Hatcher Childress authored Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth (1998) in which he reprinted the stories of Palmer and defended the Hollow Earth idea based on alleged tunnel systems beneath South America and Central Asia.
Hollow Earth proponents have claimed a number of different locations for the entrances which lead inside the Earth. Other than the North and South poles, entrances in locations which have been cited include: Paris in France, Staffordshire in England, Montreal in Canada, Hangzhou in China, and the Amazon rainforest.
Variations
In "A Culture of Conspiracy", Political scientist Michael Barkun draws a distinction between the terms hollow earth and inner earth, to differentiate materials that conceive the majority of the interior of the planet to be hollow, from those that view it as solid but honeycombed with interconnected spaces.
Concave Hollow Earths
Instead of saying that humans live on the exterior surface of a hollow planet, sometimes called a "convex" Hollow Earth hypothesis, it is hypothesized humans live on the interior surface. This has been called the "concave" Hollow Earth hypothesis or skycentrism.
Cyrus Teed, a doctor from upstate New York, proposed such a concave Hollow Earth in 1869, calling his scheme "Cellular Cosmogony". Teed founded a group called the Koreshan Unity based on this notion, which he called Koreshanity. The main colony survives as a preserved Florida state historic site, at Estero, Florida, but all of Teed's followers have now died. Teed's followers claimed to have experimentally verified the concavity of the Earth's curvature, through surveys of the Florida coastline making use of "rectilineator" equipment.
Several 20th-century German writers, including Peter Bender, Johannes Lang, Karl Neupert, and Fritz Braut, published works advocating the Hollow Earth hypothesis, or Hohlweltlehre. It has even been reported, although apparently without historical documentation, that Adolf Hitler was influenced by concave Hollow Earth ideas and sent an expedition in an unsuccessful attempt to spy on the British fleet by pointing infrared cameras up at the sky.
The Egyptian mathematician Mostafa Abdelkader wrote several scholarly papers working out a detailed mapping of the Concave Earth model. In his book On the Wild Side (1992), Martin Gardner discusses the Hollow Earth model articulated by Abdelkader. According to Gardner, this hypothesis posits that light rays travel in circular paths, and slow as they approach the center of the spherical star-filled cavern. No energy can reach the center of the cavern. A drill, Gardner says, would lengthen as it traveled away from the cavern and eventually pass through the "point at infinity" corresponding to the center of the Earth. Gardner notes that "most mathematicians believe that an inside-out universe, with properly adjusted physical laws, is empirically irrefutable". Gardner rejects the concave Hollow Earth hypothesis on the basis of Occam's razor.
Purportedly verifiable hypotheses of a Concave Hollow Earth need to be distinguished from a thought experiment which defines a coordinate transformation such that the interior of the Earth becomes "exterior" and the exterior becomes "interior". (For example, in spherical coordinates, let radius r go to R/r where R is the Earth's radius; see inversive geometry.) The transformation entails corresponding changes to the forms of physical laws. This is not a hypothesis but an illustration of the fact that any description of the physical world can be equivalently expressed in more than one way.
Contrary evidence
Schiehallion experiment
Main article: Schiehallion experimentIn 1735, Pierre Bouguer and Charles Marie de La Condamine chartered an expedition from France to the Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador. Arriving and climbing the volcano in 1738, they conducted a vertical deflection experiment at two different altitudes to determine how local mass anomalies affected gravitational pull. In a paper written a little over ten years later, Bouguer commented that his results had at least falsified the Hollow Earth Theory. In 1772, Nevil Maskelyne proposed to repeat the same experiment to the Royal Society. Within the same year, the Committee of Attraction was formed and they sent Charles Mason to find the perfect candidate for the vertical deflection experiment. Mason found the Schiehallion mountain, where the experiment took place and not only supported the earlier Chimborazo Experiment but yielded far greater results.
Seismic
The picture of the structure of the Earth that has been arrived at through the study of seismic waves is quite different from a fully hollow Earth. The time it takes for seismic waves to travel through and around the Earth directly contradicts a fully hollow sphere. The evidence indicates the Earth is mostly filled with solid rock (mantle and crust), liquid nickel-iron alloy (outer core), and solid nickel-iron (inner core).
Gravity
Main articles: Schiehallion experiment and Cavendish experimentAnother set of scientific arguments against a Hollow Earth or any hollow planet comes from gravity. Massive objects tend to clump together gravitationally, creating non-hollow spherical objects such as stars and planets. The solid spheroid is the best way to minimize the gravitational potential energy of a rotating physical object; having hollowness is unfavorable in the energetic sense. In addition, ordinary matter is not strong enough to support a hollow shape of planetary size against the force of gravity; a planet-sized hollow shell with the known, observed thickness of the Earth's crust would not be able to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium with its own mass and would collapse.
Based upon the size of the Earth and the force of gravity on its surface, the average density of the planet Earth is 5.515 g/cm, and typical densities of surface rocks are only half that (about 2.75 g/cm). If any significant portion of the Earth were hollow, the average density would be much lower than that of surface rocks. The only way for Earth to have the force of gravity that it does is for much more dense material to make up a large part of the interior. Nickel-iron alloy under the conditions expected in a non-hollow Earth would have densities ranging from about 10 to 13 g/cm, which brings the average density of Earth to its observed value.
Direct observation
Drilling holes does not provide direct evidence against the hypothesis. The deepest hole drilled to date is the Kola Superdeep Borehole, with a true vertical drill-depth of around 12 km (7.5 mi). However, the distance to the center of the Earth is nearly 6,400 km (4,000 mi).
In fiction
Main article: Subterranean fictionThe idea of a hollow Earth is a common element of fiction, appearing as early as Ludvig Holberg's 1741 novel Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum («Niels Klim's Underground Travels»), in which Nicolai Klim falls through a cave while spelunking and spends several years living on both a smaller globe within and the inside of the outer shell.
Other notable early examples include Giacomo Casanova's 1788 Icosaméron, a 5-volume, 1,800-page story of a brother and sister who fall into the Earth and discover the subterranean utopia of the Mégamicres, a race of multicolored, hermaphroditic dwarves; Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery by a "Captain Adam Seaborn" (1820) which reflected the ideas of John Cleves Symmes, Jr.; Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket; Jules Verne's 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, which showed a subterranean world teeming with prehistoric life; George Sand's 1864 novel Laura, Voyage dans le Cristal where giant crystals could be found in the interior of the Earth; Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, published anonymously in 1871; Etidorhpa, an 1895 science-fiction allegory with major subterranean themes; and The Smoky God, a 1908 novel that included the idea that the North Pole was the entrance to the hollow planet.
In William Henry Hudson's 1887 romance, A Crystal Age, the protagonist falls down a hill into a Utopian paradise; since he falls into this world, it is sometimes classified as a hollow Earth story; although the hero himself thinks he may have traveled forward in time by millennia.
The idea was used by Edgar Rice Burroughs in the seven-novel "Pellucidar" series, beginning with At the Earth's Core (1914). Using a mechanical drill, called the Iron Mole, his heroes David Innes and Professor Abner Perry discover a prehistoric world called Pellucidar, 500 miles below the surface, that is lit by a constant noonday inner sun. They find prehistoric people, dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals and the Mahar, who evolved from pterosaurs. The series ran for six more books, ending with Savage Pellucidar (1963). The 1915 novel Plutonia by Vladimir Obruchev uses the concept of the Hollow Earth to take the reader through various geological epochs.
In recent decades, the idea has become a staple of the science fiction and adventure genres across films (Children Who Chase Lost Voices, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Aquaman and the MonsterVerse), television programs (Inside Job, Slugterra, and the third and fourth seasons of Sanctuary), role-playing games (e.g., the Hollow World Campaign Set for Dungeons & Dragons, Hollow Earth Expedition), and video games (Torin's Passage and Gears of War). The idea is also partially used in the Marvel Comics universe, where there exists a subterranean realm beneath the Earth known as Subterranea. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) video game Terranigma features this concept in the opening and closing acts of the game.
The Hollow Earth is a key location in Legendary Pictures's MonsterVerse franchise, being the point of origin of the Titans and the strange animals of Skull Island. Initially being teased in Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, a full expedition into the Hollow Earth is a primary focus of Godzilla vs. Kong, its sequel Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters TV series.
In popular art
In 1975, Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo used elements of the Agartha legend, along with other Eastern subterranean myths, to depict an advanced civilization in the cover art for jazz musician Miles Davis's album Agharta. Tadanori said he was partly inspired by his reading of Raymond W. Bernard's 1969 book The Hollow Earth.
See also
- Dyson sphere
- Earth's inner core
- Expanding Earth
- Flat Earth
- Hades
- Hollow Moon
- List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
- Scientific skepticism
- Shellworld
- Travel to the Earth's center
- Xibalba
- List of Hollow Earth proponents
Citations
- Hollow Earth in the Puranas Online
- ^ The Way to Shambhala, Edwin Bernbaum, Anchor Books; 1st edition, 1980 ISBN 0-385-12794-4
- Sherwood Fox, William (1916), Greek and Roman, vol. 1, Boston, Marshall Jones Company, p. 143
- Mircea Eliade, Zalmoxis, the vanishing God: comparative studies in the religions and folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe, 1959, pp. 24–30
- Myth: its meaning and functions in ancient and other cultures, G. S. Kirk, 1970, p. 136
- John A MacCulloch, Celtic Mythology, Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc, 1932, pp. 125–26
- T. Write, Saint Patrick's Purgatory : A medieval Pilgrimage in Ireland, 1918, p. 107
- Harold Bayley, Archaic England: An Essay in Deciphering Prehistory from Megalithic Monuments, 1919 Online Edition: Link
- Angami NagaBrown, Account of Munnipore, 1968., p. 113
- Ellen Russell Emerson, Indian Myths, 1965 "It is to the Cubans we are indebted for the following version of man's origin: It was from the depths of a deep cavern in the earth that mankind issued."
- Philip Freund, Myths of Creation; 1965, pp. 131–32
- George, Wally –"Pilgrimage To The Devil"., Article in Fate magazine, Aug. 1957, pp. 38–52
- Clark B Firestone and Ruth Hambidge, The Coasts of Ilusion, Harper & Bros; First Edition, 1924
- Martha Warren Beckwith, Mandan-Hidatsa myths and ceremonies, G. E. Stechert, 1937, p. 10
- Grenville Goodwin, Myths and Tales of the White Mountain Apache, 1939, p. 20 (Kessinger Publishing have reprinted the book in 2011)
- William Martin Beauchamp, Iroquois folk lore: gathered from the Six Nations of New York, I. J. Friedman, 1965, pp. 152–153
- Pages from Hopi history, Harry Clebourne James, University of Arizona Press, 1974, Chapter 6
- Arizona and the West, Volume 17, University of Arizona Press., 1975, p. 179
- Harold Osbourne, South American Mythology. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1986, pp. 42, 119
- Stableford, Brian M. (2006). Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 137–139. ISBN 978-0-415-97460-8.
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- Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, Volumes 1–2, Albert S. Gatschet, Ams Pr Inc, 1969
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- A Journey to the Earth's Interior, Marshall Gardner, Mokelumne Hill Pr, 1974 Edition, ISBN 0-7873-1192-8
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- There are Giants in the Earth, Michael Grumley, Panther Books, 1976, pp. 42–47
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- Walter Kafton-Minkel Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races and Ufos from Inside the Earth Loompanics Unlimited, 1989 ISBN 978-1559500159
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- Alien races and Fantastic Civilizations, Serge Hutin, Berkeley Medallion Books, 1975, pp. 109–132 – In the Bowels of the Earth: Refers to the mysterious catacombs beneath Paris, and other underground mysteries which lead inside the Earth.
- The Under-People, Eric Norman, Award Books, 1969
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- Chinese ghouls and goblins, G Willoughby-Meade, Stokes co, 1929
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- Michael Barkun (2003). A Culture of Conspiracy (1st ed.). University of California Press. p. 207. ISBN 0-520-23805-2.
- Kafton-Minkel, Walter (1989). Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races & UFOs from Inside the Earth (PDF). Port Townsend: Loompanics. pp. 44–55. ISBN 9781559500159.
- Radner, Radne, Daisie, Michael (1982). Science and Unreason. Belmont, California: Wadsworth. pp. 48–50. ISBN 9780534011536.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - "Fantastically Wrong: The Legendary Scientist Who Swore Our Planet Is Hollow | WIRED". Wired. wired.com. 2014-07-02. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- Kuiper, Gerard. P. (June 1946). "German Astronomy during the War". Popular Astronomy. 54: 263–286. Bibcode:1946PA.....54..263K. See pp. 277–78.
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- Abdelkader, M. (1983). "A Geocosmos: Mapping Outer Space Into a Hollow Earth". Speculations in Science & Technology (6): 81–89.
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- On the Wild Side (1992), Martin Gardner, pp. 18–19
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- Buchwald, Dagmar (2012). "Black Sun Underground: The Music of AlieNation". In Berressem, Hanjo; Bucher, Michael; Schwagmeier, Uwe (eds.). Between Science and Fiction: The Hollow Earth as Concept and Conceit. LIT Verlag Munster. p. 109. ISBN 978-3-643-90228-3.
- Thorgerson, Storm; Powell, Aubrey (1999). 100 Best Album Covers. DK Publishing. p. 20. ISBN 0-7894-4951-X.
General and cited references
- Kafton-Minkel, Walter. Subterranean Worlds. Loompanics Unlimited, 1989.
- Lamprecht, Jan. Hollow Planets: A Feasibility Study of Possible Hollow Worlds Grave Distraction Publications, 2014.
- Lewis, David. The Incredible Cities of Inner Earth. Science Research Publishing House, 1979.
- Seaborn, Captain Adam. Symzonia; Voyage of Discovery. J. Seymour, 1820.
- Standish, David. Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth's Surface. Da Capo Press, 2006.
External links
- What Curiosity in the Structure: The Hollow Earth in Science
- Library of Congress References
- Stories of a Hollow Earth Public Domain Review
- Skeptic Dictionary: Hollow Earth
- "Is Our Globe Hollow?", Scientific American, 13 July 1878, p. 20
- Marshall Gardner
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