Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups by Charlotte Greig Page B
Authors: Charlotte Greig
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each other. He also advanced the idea that each of these was lit by a luminous gas. The aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, was evidence of this gas, he claimed. This is how the gas looked when it was escaping at the North Pole, where he believed the Earth's crust had thinned. Halley also believed that the spheres could well be inhabited, although he did not specify by what exact forms of life.
Next, a Swiss mathematician named Leonhard Euler proposed that instead of several spheres there was only one, which was at the centre of the Earth. This, he thought, was lit by an inner sun that allowed an advanced civilization to prosper there. Today there is some dispute as to whether Euler actually claimed this to be the case, or whether he was merely raising the possibility as a "thought experiment". Whatever the case, his ideas inspired several other thinkers. One of these was another mathematician, a Scotsman called Sir John Leslie, who went on to claim that there were two suns, Proserpine and Pluto, that lit the subterranean realms at the Earth's core.
Our hollow Earth: This illustration demonstrates how we actually live on the
inside
of our globe, looking inwards to the sun and other planets of the solar system.
U NITED STATES E XPEDITION
During the nineteenth century, the idea of a "hollow Earth" became popular among would-be explorers, several of whom suggested making expeditions to find this lost world. In 1818, John Cleves Symmes, a businessman, began to raise money to support an expedition to the "hole" at the North Pole where he believed that the inner spheres of the Earth could be entered. He died before the expedition could take place but, in 1838, a newspaperman called Jeremiah Reynolds took up the challenge, agitating for the United States government to send out a force, which they did in that year. The Wilkes Expedition, as it was called, did not find the alleged hole, but over a period of years they brought back a great deal of useful information about the continent that came to be called Antarctica.
The next proponent of the hollow Earth theory was William Reed, whose book,
Phantom of the Poles
, was written in 1906. Seven years later, Marshall Gardner wrote
A Journey to the Earth's Interior
, and also made a working model of the Earth's core as he envisaged it. When an extinct species of woolly mammoth was found frozen in the ice in Siberia, Gardner advanced the idea that it had strayed out of the inner zone by passing through the hole at the Earth's pole. According to him, all manner of extinct animals wandered about this subterranean world and here was the evidence for it.
Since that time, new generations of writers have come up with the idea of life in this "hollow Earth": from prehistoric animals to a race of enlightened human beings. It has also been claimed that entrance can be gained to this subterranean civilization through holes in the Earth – in Antarctica, Tibet, Peru and the United States. Not only this, but some believe that UFOs and other extraterrestrial phenomena emanate from this underworld.
T HE CULT OF K ORESH
One of the most notorious "hollow Earth" theorists was Cyrus Read Teed, who took the theory one step further by claiming that the Earth was a completely hollow sphere, with a great human civilization living inside it. He founded a cult in Florida and declared himself to be Koresh, a Messiah, before he died in 1908. Outlandish as his ideas sounded, some aspects of physics and mathematics could be employed to support them and a few scientists continued to investigate his ideas after his death.
By the end of the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth, claims about the existence of a highly developed, ancient civilization under the Earth's crust continued to abound. Not surprisingly, the idea of a master race proved especially popular among Nazi sympathizers. There was even a theory that Adolf Hitler had escaped to join them – via Antarctica in spacecraft – after his
Next, a Swiss mathematician named Leonhard Euler proposed that instead of several spheres there was only one, which was at the centre of the Earth. This, he thought, was lit by an inner sun that allowed an advanced civilization to prosper there. Today there is some dispute as to whether Euler actually claimed this to be the case, or whether he was merely raising the possibility as a "thought experiment". Whatever the case, his ideas inspired several other thinkers. One of these was another mathematician, a Scotsman called Sir John Leslie, who went on to claim that there were two suns, Proserpine and Pluto, that lit the subterranean realms at the Earth's core.
Our hollow Earth: This illustration demonstrates how we actually live on the
inside
of our globe, looking inwards to the sun and other planets of the solar system.
U NITED STATES E XPEDITION
During the nineteenth century, the idea of a "hollow Earth" became popular among would-be explorers, several of whom suggested making expeditions to find this lost world. In 1818, John Cleves Symmes, a businessman, began to raise money to support an expedition to the "hole" at the North Pole where he believed that the inner spheres of the Earth could be entered. He died before the expedition could take place but, in 1838, a newspaperman called Jeremiah Reynolds took up the challenge, agitating for the United States government to send out a force, which they did in that year. The Wilkes Expedition, as it was called, did not find the alleged hole, but over a period of years they brought back a great deal of useful information about the continent that came to be called Antarctica.
The next proponent of the hollow Earth theory was William Reed, whose book,
Phantom of the Poles
, was written in 1906. Seven years later, Marshall Gardner wrote
A Journey to the Earth's Interior
, and also made a working model of the Earth's core as he envisaged it. When an extinct species of woolly mammoth was found frozen in the ice in Siberia, Gardner advanced the idea that it had strayed out of the inner zone by passing through the hole at the Earth's pole. According to him, all manner of extinct animals wandered about this subterranean world and here was the evidence for it.
Since that time, new generations of writers have come up with the idea of life in this "hollow Earth": from prehistoric animals to a race of enlightened human beings. It has also been claimed that entrance can be gained to this subterranean civilization through holes in the Earth – in Antarctica, Tibet, Peru and the United States. Not only this, but some believe that UFOs and other extraterrestrial phenomena emanate from this underworld.
T HE CULT OF K ORESH
One of the most notorious "hollow Earth" theorists was Cyrus Read Teed, who took the theory one step further by claiming that the Earth was a completely hollow sphere, with a great human civilization living inside it. He founded a cult in Florida and declared himself to be Koresh, a Messiah, before he died in 1908. Outlandish as his ideas sounded, some aspects of physics and mathematics could be employed to support them and a few scientists continued to investigate his ideas after his death.
By the end of the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth, claims about the existence of a highly developed, ancient civilization under the Earth's crust continued to abound. Not surprisingly, the idea of a master race proved especially popular among Nazi sympathizers. There was even a theory that Adolf Hitler had escaped to join them – via Antarctica in spacecraft – after his
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