Hollow Earth Theory - Is there a different world inside the Earth?

Somewhere on the border between science and fiction, there is a theory that has intrigued and created controversy for more than four centuries - The Hollow Earth Hypothesis.

Edmund Halley (1656–1742) went down in history as the first astronomer to calculate the orbit of a comet that passes the Earth every 76 years. The celestial object, known today as Halley's Comet, first appeared under that name in 1682.

In the next decade, Halley's attention was no longer drawn to the sky, but the earth, or rather to the realm that would lie beneath the earth. He began to claim that the Earth was hollow inside, populated by humans and wild animals.

Hollow Earth Theory

This extremely interesting concept revolves around the existence of a dwarf Sun (or what is supposed to be an object with similar properties) inside the Earth, around the existence of a race of superior humans, a mythological civilization, and several underground cities.

Several recent events seem to lend some support to those who believe in this theory. The evidence, as presented, is hard to ignore, so hard that several researchers have turned their efforts to studying the hollow Earth hypothesis.

The concept of the underworld has existed since ancient times when the underworld was often associated with suffering, torture, and eternal punishment.

Such ideas of underground worlds can be found in Greek (Hades), Nordic (Svartalfheim), Christian (Hell), and Hebrew (Sheol) mythologies, but also in Kabbalistic literature where numerous descriptions of an inner Earth appear.

Edmond Halley's theory

In 1692, Edmond Halley launched the idea that the Earth would consist of a hollow layer about 800 km thick, two concentric rings, and an inner core the size of the planet Mars.

The inner spheres are separated by different atmospheres and each sphere has its magnetic poles. The spheres rotate at different speeds. Halley believed that there was light between the spheres and that at least the first outer layer could harbor life forms.

Halley's idea was developed during the 18th and 19th centuries and was sometimes based on scientific arguments. However, none of the claims of the proponents of the Hollow Earth Theory could be based on definite evidence.

Those who still accept this hypothesis, in the 21st century, are part of a long line of people who believed that life could also exist below the Earth's surface.

Halley's theory was based on the fact that there were variations in the Earth's magnetic field over time. Halley suggested that there were several types of magnetic fields, one of which emanated from a sphere inside the Earth.

He eventually developed the theory that there were four concentric, hollow spheres within the planet. He believed that the Earth's interior was populated with life and had a luminous atmosphere. The aurora borealis, he concluded, was an emanation of radiant gases from within the planet, escaping through the thin layers of the polar crust.

The sun from within

In the 18th century, Halley's theory was adopted by two other famous mathematicians - the Swiss Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) and the Scottish John Leslie (1766–1832).

Euler abandoned Halley's idea of ​​concentric spheres. He postulated that a hot core about a thousand kilometers in diameter was heating and lighting the inner Earth, where an advanced civilization was developing.

On the other hand, Leslie believed that there were two concentric spheres within the Earth, each with its own Sun, which he named Pluto and Proserpina, after the Greek god of the underworld and his wife.

A similar concept was also developed by L. Sprague de Camp and Willy Ley who in the book Lands Beyond proposed the theory known today as The Hollow Earth Hypothesis

They started from the idea launched by Halley, but their version was a much simplified one.

According to the two authors, 1,000 km inside the Earth there is a core that releases heat and light for the civilizations inside.

The two authors did not name the sources they relied on when they reached this conclusion, but in a letter that Ley addressed to the German princess Euler, he admitted that their theory was based on some experiments which would have been performed on a "Miniature Earth".

Connection craters at the poles

Perhaps the most enthusiastic supporter of the Hollow Earth Theory was the American John Cleves Symmes, born in 1780 in New Jersey. He was named after an uncle who had fought in the American Revolutionary War.

Symmes also fought in the War of 1812, after which he settled in St. Louis, Missouri, establishing a trading post.

The man then devoted himself to the study of natural sciences. In 1818, he published his version of the Hollow Earth Theory, postulating that it had concentric spheres and received light and heat from the Sun through the vast open holes at the Earth's poles.

Symmons wanted an expedition to the North Pole to prove the existence of so-called "connecting craters".

Despite the obstacles encountered, Symmes continued to popularize his ideas: he was a prolific orator and writer of articles and letters; he also produced fictional descriptions of the Hollow Earth, including Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery (1820), which he published under the pseudonym, Adam Seaborn.

His proposed theory that the Earth's interior was illuminated by openings at the poles became the most popular version of the Hollow Earth hypothesis and would be tested as soon as humans tried to reach the poles.

Symmes succeeded in impressing two influential figures of the era, who would take up his cause.

James McBride, a wealthy businessman from Ohio, wrote articles in support of the concentric spheres version of the hollow Earth. He lobbied a Kentucky senator to support the organization of an expedition to explore trade routes in the southern hemisphere (where McBride hoped the expedition would continue until the opening at the Pole).

The senator he lobbied for, Richard M. Johnson (1790–1850), later became Vice President of the United States under Martin Van Buren (1782–1862). In 1828, President John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) hinted that he would approve financing the expedition.

But when Adams left office in 1829, his successor, Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), vetoed the bill to finance the expedition.

The refusal only fueled speculation that the United States government knew about the existence of the underworld and the craters that connect to it.

The Wilkes Expedition

Symmes died in 1829, but his cause was continued by Jeremiah Reynolds, an Ohio newspaper editor.

After failing to raise government funds for the expedition, in 1829 Reynolds joined the crew of a ship traveling to the South Seas to hunt seals, and seven years later, in 1836, he supported renewed efforts to sponsor an expedition to the Hemisphere Southern.

Reynolds spoke to Congress, emphasizing the national glory that would accompany scientific discoveries and expand foreign relations, but he became so impatient with the methodical planning and a succession of postponements that he was kicked out of the crew.

What would become known as the Wilkes Expedition, after its commander, Charles Wilkes (1798–1877), began in 1838. When the expedition ended in 1842, it had effectively mapped the land mass where Symmes had assumed a wide hole in the earth's surface.

The seventh continent of the world, Antarctica, was officially recognized for the first time.

The theory of open poles, advanced by Symmes, had been thoroughly undermined, and yet the belief in the hollow earth would become even more popular.

In 1846, the remains of a long-extinct woolly mammoth were discovered perfectly preserved in ice in Siberia.

The frost had set in so quickly that the animal had not even had time to digest the pine cones it had eaten before it died. It was assumed that the mammoth had been surprised by a change in climate, but many doubted that such a change could have happened so quickly and completely.

Some believed that the mammoth had simply come out of the Earth's interior through a hole at the North Pole.

Is there a superior civilization inside the Earth?

In 1913, when the North Pole had already been reached, Marshall Gardner published A Journey to the Earth's Interior, or Have the Poles Been Discovered?, in which he claimed that many species considered extinct still exist inside the Earth.

Gardner theorized that Earth's interior was being heated by material still in rotation from the planet's formation. Based on the law of centrifugal force, Gardner suggested that the Earth had originally been a rotating mass of matter.

An outer layer of matter had solidified and continued to rotate around a central axis, while an inner layer had also solidified and was warmed by the heat continually given off by the Earth's rotation.

In the same year, William Reed published The Phantom of the Poles, written in 1906, in which he promoted the idea that a ship could pass from the outer to the inner Earth. The effect of gravity on the ship was the same, he believed, inside as outside.

The author even claimed that some sailors had already crossed over to Inner Earth without realizing it. Gravity had pulled them inward, where a Sun over 1,000 km in diameter continued to warm them, as the Sun outside had done until then.

Between the discovery of the woolly mammoth and these books appearing in 1913, fascination with the hollow Earth inside was expressed by scientists and fantasy writers.

Jules Verne (1828–1905) published Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), in which the characters enter the interior of the Earth, where an advanced civilization of giants is developing.

In this story, it is said that the giants built a paradise and discovered a form of energy so powerful it was still forbidden to use it as a potential weapon. But paradise is threatened not by weapons, but by the lack of conflict, which generates general boredom.

One of the most interesting variations on the Hollow Earth Theory to appear in the late 19th century was expounded by Cyrus Read Teed (1830–1908).

In The Cellular Cosmogony or The Earth, A Concave Sphere, Teed claimed that a superior civilization resided on the inner, concave surface of the Earth. The dense atmosphere prevented the surface from being seen through, but the Moon, in Teed's opinion, would reflect the larger, uninhabitable surface of the Earth.

Teed turned his discoveries into religion and changed his name to Koresh, the Hebrew equivalent of his name, Cyrus.

As the Messiah of Koreshianism, he formed a church, established a magazine, The Flaming Cross, which continued to appear regularly until the 1940s, and established a community on a 150-acre tract of land in Florida, in 1894.

He lived there with nearly 250 followers until 1908. After his death, the disciples waited for him to rise again, as he had prophesied. After four days, the authorities took action and ordered his burial.

Hitler believed in the existence of an underground world

The Thule secret society, whose work was well known to Adolf Hitler, produced several reports between 1940 and 1944, reports that referred to Tibetan myths of "great openings leading to the depths."

There are several theories according to which Adolf Hitler requested several expeditions to Antarctica. In 1944, Admiral Donitz gave a speech to German soldiers in which he spoke of a "great invisible fortification built especially for the Fuhrer".

Later, during the Nuremberg trial, the same admiral Donitz spoke of "an invisible fortress in the heart of the land of eternal ice."

It is well known that Hitler's great ambition was to create a race of superior humans (Ayran), a race similar to the Atlanteans, whose goal would have been world domination. Hitler believed this was possible after studying several ancient myths, including the Hollow Earth theory.

As for the Nazi expeditions to Antarctica, the official reports disappeared immediately after the end of the war. Some voices say that several Nazi soldiers, commanders, and scientists managed to escape in the last days of the war to Antarctica where they found an entrance to the Inner Earth.

According to the Inland Earth Research Society of Ontario, Canada, no fewer than 2,000 scientists from Germany and Italy, along with nearly a million German citizens, disappeared immediately after the war ended.

It appears that the Allies have discovered a series of documents that speak of an unknown, highly technologically advanced civilization that lives "beneath the Earth's crust."

The same reports suggested that the Nazis had come into contact with that civilization, which would have given them access to several highly advanced technologies (including the technologies for the German Ho 2–29 fighter planes and the Ho 18 bombers that would later drop an atomic bomb on New York).

The Adventures of Admiral Byrd

Richard E. Byrd, an admiral in the United States Navy undertook two expeditions: the first to the North Pole in 1926, and the second to Antarctica in 1929.

Regarding the first expedition, Byrd noted in his journal:

I would like to see the land beyond the North Pole, it is the Center of the Great Unknown.

In the diary, Byrd describes a truly extraordinary adventure. He tells how he found the entrance to the Inner Earth where he traveled almost 35 km over mountains, lakes, rivers, lush vegetation, and animals.

The admiral talks about huge animals that were extremely similar to ancient mammoths and talks about cities and flourishing civilizations.

The admiral's plane was met by flying ships, very different from what he had seen before. They escorted him to a city where he was met by emissaries of the Agartha civilization. After resting, Byrd and his crew were taken before the queen and king of Agartha.

They would have told him that he was allowed access to their cities because of his high moral standards and impeccable character.

Then both the king and the queen expressed their concern about what was happening on the surface: about the war and about the bombs being tested by the governments of the world. After the meeting was over, both Byrd and his crew were led to the planet's surface.

Byrd also noted that the two openings at the North Pole and the South Pole are not the only access routes to the inner Earth.

What evidence is there

The first and most important evidence that contradicts the idea of ​​the existence of another world inside the Earth is gravity. Massive objects tend to cluster together, leading to the appearance of spherical objects with solid interiors that we call planets or stars.

Compact spherical objects are the best way to minimize the gravitational potential energy inside them. Because of this, empty spaces inside would not make sense from an energetic point of view.

In addition, ordinary matter is not strong enough to support internal cavities at the planetary level, against the force of gravity.

An inhabitant of the "Inner Earth" would not be able to stand on that surface because the gravitational force does not press on objects, but attracts them. In fact, in theory, if beings existed inside the Earth, they would float adrift.

And the mass of the Earth contradicts the Hollow Earth Theory. If the planet were a giant hollow sphere, then the total mass would be much less than the calculated one, and the gravitational force on the surface would be much reduced.

The second proof is represented by the information obtained from the seismic tests. Although the Earth's core is not visible to the naked eye, it can be observed using a special technique involving seismic vibrations.

It is the same method that allowed researchers to conclude that the Earth consists of a mantle, an outer core, and an inner core.

The third and last proof is given by the excavations carried out so far. The deepest hole ever dug is called SG-3 and is 12.3 km deep. Excavations have confirmed the internal structure of the Earth as we all know it.

Mystery Shaver (primordial race)

One of the strangest stories related to the world below was published in 1945 in Amazing Stories magazine. The article, written by Ray Palmer, tells the story of an American writer and artist named Richard Shaver. The article described several events as Shaver had related them.

According to him, in the depths, an ancient race would have lived, the "Primordial Race" (or the Titans as they were known in antiquity). These titans were visitors from another world who sought refuge on Earth.

Soon, however, they realized that our Sun was causing them to age prematurely, so the Titans took refuge underground, where they built complex cave systems and imposing cities.

Eventually, the Titans left Earth in search of a more welcoming world, leaving behind a veritable treasure trove of technology.

Shaver states that the Titans have left several robots to guard the treasures in the abandoned cities. The gigantic machines built by the "Primordial Race" are still in operation today and are responsible for the noise that can sometimes be heard from the depths of the earth.

Despite the incredible success of the Amazing Stories article, Palmer refused to divulge the location of the underground entrance. Although many readers believed the story, most were convinced that Shaver suffered from mental problems.