For centuries, Hollow Earth conspiracy theorists have tried to prove that a whole other world exists beneath our own. But first they have to find their way in.
Since time immemorial, people have believed that another world lies just beneath the surface of our planet. For some cultures – the ancient Greeks, for example – it is a dark place filled with the souls of the dead. But most of these early beliefs were of metaphorical or mythological origin.
Modern science believes that the Earth is a continuous series of layers, crusts and liquid magma surrounding a dense, hot core composed mainly of iron and nickel. But not everyone is convinced. In the 17th century, some of the leading scientific minds of the day came up with a new theory: that the planet is actually hollow. This idea has proven to be incredibly sustainable.
Even today, there is a small group of Hollow Earth believers who are fighting valiantly to validate their ideas through books, websites, meetings, and some extremely ambitious travel plans.
“My view of the Hollow Earth, based on my research, is that the Earth’s shell is about 800 miles thick, from the outside to the inside surface,” says Rodney Cluff, author of World Top Secret: Our Earth IS Hollow.
He went even further: half the planet is taken up by surface weight, and then there’s empty space, and then something else.
“In the center of that cavity there is an inner sun that is separated by day and night sides,” he says. ‘The other part of the Hollow Earth theory is that there are significant openings near the North and South Poles that lead inland. .”
We have read the legendary stories about the Nazis who explored the southern regions of our planet and even created secret bases in Neuschwabenland. Some also speak of Operation Highjump and Admiral Byrd’s voyages, in which extremely advanced airships flew around and explored new areas.
Not long ago we discovered a map of the Third Reich depicting several secret passages used by German U-boats to access mysterious underground areas, as well as a complete map of both hemispheres and the mysterious kingdom of Agartha .
Possibly the first person to scientifically speculate about a hollow Earth was none other than Edmund Halley, known for Halley’s Comet. Halley’s theory, proposed in 1692 as a way to explain anomalous compass readings, is that the planet is a series of nested, spherical shells, rotating in different directions, all surrounding a central core.
According to his estimate, based on measurements of the magnetic field and what he knew about the gravity of the sun and moon on Earth, this model could explain any inaccuracies in his measurements of the planet’s magnetic fields. He also postulated that the space between each shell may have had a luminous atmosphere capable of supporting life.
In the early 1970s, ESSA, a project of the United States Department of Commerce, gave the media access to images of the Arctic taken by the ESSA-7 satellite on November 23, 1968.
In one of the photos the North Pole was covered by the usual cloud; the other showed the same area without clouds and revealed a huge hole where the pole should have been
Between 1946 and 1947, he and his team conducted a large-scale operation called “High Jump”, discovering and mapping 1,390,000 km² of Antarctic territory.
The famous Byrd expeditions first brought into question the hollow Earth theories when several articles and books, such as Worlds beyond the Poles by Amadeo Giannini, claimed that Byrd had not flown over the Pole, but had flown in through large holes that led to earth.
From science to science fiction
In 1864, Jules Verne published A Journey to the Center of the Earth, which imagined an alien world within our own, and while this was not the first work of fiction to propose such a thing (one might say that the first such work of fiction about the alien world within ours is Dante’s poem, Inferno), Verne’s work quickly became the benchmark for such fantasy stories, spawning an entire subgenre of underground science fiction.
Many of these stories used the theories of Halley and Symmes as a starting point for tales of strange prehistoric jungles and highly advanced, lost human races.
The 1892 novel, The Goddess of Atvatabar, or The History of the Discovery of the Interior World, used Symmes’ model as the basis for a story about a rich inner world inhabited by a race of spiritually enlightened beings. This view of the Hollow Earth appears to be one of the main inspirations for many of the current tropes within modern Hollow Earth theory.
Evidence of a ‘hollow Earth’ is found in the histories of countless ancient civilizations.
The Babylonian hero Gilgamesh visited his ancestor Utnapishtim in the bowels of the earth; in Greek mythology, Orpheus tries to rescue Eurydice from the underground hell; it was said that the pharaohs of Egypt communicated with the underworld, which was accessible through secret tunnels hidden in the pyramids; and Buddhists believed (and still believe) that millions of people live in Agharta, an underground paradise ruled by the king of the world.
So just when you think these theories could be nothing more than outrageous flights of fancy, you come across evidence in ancient history that points to the possibility of a world within the Earth.
Recently, new research suggests that UFOs may belong to non-human intelligences (NHI) with whom we share the Earth. Who knows? Perhaps there are indeed hidden places on our planet where a highly developed civilization could reside.
What do you think of the Hollow Earth theory? Is it possible that another world exists beneath the surface of our planet? And is it possible that there really is life down there?
