Antarctica and the Hollow Earth
Antarctica figures centrally in a number of conspiracy theories and one of the most enduring has been that of the Hollow Earth.
In 1665, Athanathius Kircher, in a treatise on Vulcanology (study of volcanoes) proposed the idea of a Hollow Earth that was open at the North and South poles.
Edmund Halley (of Halley’s comet fame) also put forward a Hollow Earth theory in 1692 to explain gravity variations. He postulated an outer shell of about 500 miles (800 km) thick, with two inner concentric shells and an innermost core.
Although practically disproved by the nineteenth century there were a number of other believers who wrote about the concept and the theory evolved into a completely hollow Earth with a central sun.
The theory had a resurgence in 1818 when John Cleves Symmes, a veteran of the war of 1812, began promoting the idea. The supposed North and South Polar entrances came to be known as Symmes Holes. The Hollow Earth Monument marks his gravesite and is one of the oldest, oddest, public memorials in the U.S.
The Hollow Earth appears in the fictional writing of Edgar Allen Poe (where Antarctica was the entrance), Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs (creator of Tarzan), Rudyard Kipling and even Australia’s own Sir Douglas Mawson, who, while acting as physicist on Shackleton’s Nimrod Expedition, wrote a fictional account of his visit to the cavernous land of ‘Bathybia’ whose entrance was through an Antarctic volcano.
The inside of the Hollow Earth is supposedly a lush tropical paradise that houses an advanced race of humans/aliens/giants. Take your pick.
Believers also claim that there is a supposed ‘secret’ journal entry by Admiral Richard Byrd, alluding to his visit to the Hollow Earth when flying over Antarctica in 1947, on one of his five expeditions to that continent. Of course, believers say that there has been a cover-up.
There’s even a retired colonel in the US Air Force, Billie Faye Woodward, who claims that he and his twin sister, both hermaphrodites (i.e. they have both male and female sex organs) were born in the Hollow Earth. Yep, it doesn’t get much weirder.
Although Seismic, geological and gravity studies have shown that theEarth’s interior is a mix of solids and liquid magma and no hollow exists this hasn’t stopped the myth from persisting till today. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Antarctica – always fascinating.