Hollow earth theory is sort of similar to the flat earth theory. It was very popular back in the olden days but has since been filed in the drawer marked “Nah… probably not”. Unlike the flat earth theory, though, there are a good few people around who still think there’s some truth in it.
The general idea is that the the earth is either hollow or contains a substantial amount of space within it. Some theorists claim there is also an internal sun at the centre. Although, to anyone who has a basic understanding of modern geology and astronomy, the claims seems a little, well, nuts, there’s still plenty of willing proponents.
Hollow earth conspiracists generally believe that there’s an entrance at the North and/or South pole via which one can enter and visit this central plane.
Within can be found creatures who live, safe from earthly pollution including ancient tribes and wooly mammoths. Why are these huge openings to the inner earth not visible on satellite footage and Google Earth? Government conspiracy, obviously. The bankers don’t want the pristine creatures below disturbing their “slaves”.
Despite the fact that there have been many Polar adventures, the theory’s darlings are not convinced that all of the questions have been answered.
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So, where did this all start? Well, right at the birth of the written word pretty much. Ancient Greeks, Jews, Buddhists, Thracians, Mesopotamians, Celts, Siberians, Native Americans of the North and South. They all had some kind of hollow earth theory of their own.
But, just because an idea is old doesn’t make it any more true; but, it suggests to me a general human penchant for believing we don’t live on solid rock. It’s as if a hollow earth makes sense to the human brain, and perhaps that’s why it has persisted for so long.
Halley put forth a hollow earth theory which included concentric internal rings. He believed we have an external crust, two internal concentric rings and a central core, all of which have atmosphere in between and rotate independently. Halley theorised that the aurora borealis was produced by gas released from these separated atmospheres.
Cleves Symmes became one of the most famous hollow earth proponents when he released his theory which consisted of a hollow outer shell, four internal shells and large openings at the surface of both poles.
He proposed a trip to the North Pole to investigate. President at the time – John Quincy Adams – was behind the idea, but left office before it could take place. The next president, Andrew Jackson, was having none of it and halted the expedition…
In his book entitled Phantom of the Poles, Reed made a new theory of humanity’s origin. He tried to explain some of the odd phenomena experienced by polar explorers and came up with his own version of the hollow earth theory.
Reed attempted to explain why compasses didn’t behave themselves, he tried to explain the aurora and why nights are longer in the Polar winter, all through the lens of the hollow earth theory. Reed’s pet theory did away with the internal shells and internal sun.
Warren, in his book Paradise Found: The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, made some bold new claims. He posited that humanity developed in a continent at the North Pole called Hyperborea, before migrating down towards the equator, rather than the other way round which is the established way of thinking.
His theory was popular with Hollow Earth thinkers who started to wager that Mongolians and Inuits initially developed inside the earth and migrated out at some point in ancient history.
Papashvily was a Georgian born artist and engineer. Released in 1941, his book Anything Can Happen made some wonderfully wild claims. He claimed to have found a cavern filled with human skeletons with skulls “as big as bushel baskets”. The caves led directly to the centre of the earth.
According to Papashvily one man entered and never returned.
As time drifted by more and more books and personalities put their names and reputations behind hollow earth ideas. Some spoke of robots underground and of course, in the 60’s, UFOs started appearing in the tales: aliens living below the surface of the earth, or at least parking their ships down there.
Others still spoke of ancient tunnels dug by our ancestors where primitive humans lived and could be heard shrieking in the quietness every once in a while.
Convex Hollow Earth – humans live on the outside of a hollow planet
Concave Hollow Earth – humans live on the inside of a ball and as we stare up into the blackness of space we are actually staring down into the pitch dark centre of the earth.
Cyrus Teed, a New York doctor, claimed that with the help of his team and a “rectilineator” he had measured the Florida coastline and with his measurements could prove beyond doubt that the earth was concave.
Various 20th Century German writers promoted hollow earth thinking and some rumours have it that Hitler was himself a believer, although there’s no documentary proof. It wouldn’t be a massive surprise though, not with Hitler’s heavy use of the occult and his general all-round madness.
We’ve now reached the 90’s and things have slowed down a touch for hollow earth theories, but certainly not vanished. Gardner released a book called On The Wild Side. In this manuscript he discusses hollow earth theories by Abdelkader.
Abdelkader thought that light in our hollow planet travels in a circular route which slows as it reaches the centre of our concave earth. Gardner said that “most mathematicians believe that an inside-out universe, with properly adjusted physical laws, is empirically irrefutable”.
Gardner himself however refutes the theory on the basis of Occam’s Razor. Sensible chap. Just because something could be true doesn’t make it more likely…
It seems so contrary to most people’s world view that it almost seems needless to put in reverse arguments. But, humans are often wrong and science makes mistakes, so if you’re going to refute something you’d better back it up with some facts.
The flat earth theory worked fine and dandy for ages and the idea that we were walking on a massive ball probably seemed like madness back then. So it’s always good to know why you disagree.
Seismic waves travel across the planet on a frequent basis. By measuring these in detail, the picture that develops is not that of a planet with a hole in it. Rather it fits the bill of a solid rocky outer shell, a liquid nickel-alloy outer core and a solid nickel-iron inner core.
Gravity tends to clump stuff together and the bigger the clump gets the bigger the act of gravity upon it. So something smaller than the earth has less gravity than something bigger.
So, a hollow shape wouldn’t naturally develop from the forces of gravity. Also, a hollow earth would be likely to crumble with the forces of gravity trying to pop it over millennia.
From the earth’s size and gravitational pull, its density can be inferred and the numbers that come out don’t leave any room for a hollow core.
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The deepest hole drilled to date is the Z-44 Chayvo oil well which is 12,376 m (40,604 ft) deep. So that means, if nothing else, that the hollow bit of the earth can’t start until after that point.
So there’s a fair bit of evidence against the theory but that doesn’t stop people wanting to trek to the North Pole to check for an entrance themselves. The evidence against hollow earth isn’t quite damning enough for those that want to believe.
The evidence against is, to a certain extent, circumstantial, and humans only need one seed of doubt to allow theories grow, which isn’t a bad thing at all for the advancement of knowledge.
In the 1940’s Admiral Richard Byrd gave the theory a well needed modern chunk of gravitas. This decorated military man, an officer of the US Navy with one of the highest medals of honor made claims that pushed hollow earth theorists back into the glare of respectability.
Byrd claimed to have flown over the North Pole’s entrance to the centre of the earth and to have actually climbed on into it. He reported seeing lush vegetation, lakes and rivers within. He even claimed to have been picked up by a flying machine and met the occupants of this land called “Agartha” (or Agharta).
Byrd was of the opinion that the earth’s poles are convex rather than concave and, as such, ships or planes could just fly/float right into one of the many openings.
The story was very popular at the time and even National Geographic covered it. As with all good conspiracy stories the government suppressed it, possibly because it made them look like a bunch of Grade A loons, but that was fuel to the conspiracists fires.
Byrd’s son, who accompanied him on this mission, aged 6, also added a macabre and textbook twist to the tale. He was found alone in an abandoned warehouse, in dirty clothes, dead at aged 68.
Oh, and Byrd the elder was a Freemason too. Another box ticked…
Another man that added much needed credence to the theory was a German U-boat sailor who voyaged to the North Pole in 1943. This sailor – Karl Unger – claimed that he and his crew entered our hollow earth through a submerged cavern and met an advanced civilisation living somewhere called “Rainbow Island” (imaginative).
Some people theorise that Hitler escaped to the safety of hollow earth after the war. Well, why not?
In recent years there have been various attempts to get enough money and interest together to make a voyage to find this elusive massive opening in the wild north (or south) but none have yet quite made it.
In 2002 Thompson Bell had a car accident, after he was pulled from the wreckage he claimed he’d had various visions and was now convinced there was a subterranean society.
He wrote a book (which turned out to be mostly plagiarism) and attempted to set up his own voyage. Mysteriously Bell took his comic book which showcased his beliefs off the shelves, despite it being a best seller (possibly due to it being plagiarised) and pretty much vanished off the face of the earth.
The date set for his mission was towards the end of 2003 but nothing ever came of it and no one knows where he is. Mysterious?
The North Pole Inner Earth Exploration team still carry the dream of taking a mission to the North Pole to investigate this theory further. According to their website they are planning to begin their mission in the summer of 2014.
They’ve been campaigning and saving and picking up Youtube hits for six years now, and their time to bite the bullet and take a look may be approaching.
They’re renting a nuclear-powered icebreaker from Russia with a helicopter on board. They have the equipment planned, the itinerary published but their website doesn’t seem to have been updated since January 2014?
The leader of the group “Dr” Brooks Agnew seems to be a fairly shady character with an untraceable pHD and a chip on his shoulder about HAARP technology, so maybe he’s run off with the cash they’ve generated so far? Who knows.
At the end of the day there is no real hard evidence for the hollow earth theory, just hearsay. However, there is a sizeable amount of evidence for the boring old solid blob theory we all know and love.
Part of me, and part of anyone who likes a surprise, wants the hollow earth thing to be true, but alas it doesn’t look likely. But, just incase someone is trawling redundant web pages in the year 3087 I’d better end cautiously by saying… you never know…
