– (Gustavo Rodrigues/)
1. The assumption that the Earth is hollow is not new. The belief has already passed through several civilizations – from the Greeks to the Mayans, always with a religious background. They all believed in one thing in common: the depths of the Earth would also be the depths of hell, where impure souls would be sent, suffering for eternity.
two. In 1692, Edmund Halley (the same one who discovered the comet’s orbit) created the first scientific theory of the hollow Earth. He noticed a small variation in the planet’s magnetic field and concluded that it would only be possible with internal magnetic fields. This is also how he explained the aurora borealis: gases that escaped from the hollow interior of the Earth. Inside it would live superior and divine beings, also created by God.
3. Already in the 18th century, inspired by Halley’s theories, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler created his own thesis: there would only be a hollow layer inside the Earth, with a sun almost 1,000 km long, which would offer light and heat to the possible inhabitants of the region . Euler’s ideas were also used by the Scottish mathematician Sir John Leslie. For him, however, there was not only one sun in the hollow Earth, but two
4. In 1871, a book would give more power to this theory: the fiction work Vril – The Power of the Coming Race («Vril – The Power of the Race of the Future»), by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. In the book’s universe, the world beneath the surface is an advanced, utopian society with skies, seas, and architecture reminiscent of ancient Egypt. Its inhabitants, the Vril-ya, are surface beings who fled underground to escape the Great Flood of the Bible. They have devices to fly and use a substance, the Vril, to have healing and destructive powers.
5. Although the book was fiction, its idea was adopted as reality and became the core belief of a secret society founded in Germany, called the Vril Society (also known as Thule). They believed that the inhabitants of the center of the Earth were pure Aryans. According to author Rob Arndt, the Vril Society began a program in the 1920s to create flying saucers with underground technology, something made possible through a secret pact.
– (Gustavo Rodrigues/)
6. The sect would have even caught the attention of Adolf Hitler, as the Vril Society was strongly connected to Nazism. Convinced of the theory, the dictator would have sent, from 1936, expeditions throughout Europe and Antarctica and would have found an entrance to the South Pole. It is even said that, at the end of the war, Hitler fled to Argentina and from there to the hollow Earth, through that entrance. Some believe, to this day, that passages to the hollow Earth would have been the destination of the escape of many Nazis after the 2nd World War.
7. Over the years, several authors have shaped the theory: the Earth would be concave at the poles and these depressions would be entrances to the hollow. The biggest impact was with the book The Hollow Earthfrom 1964, which recounted an accidental trip by Admiral Richard E. Byrd to the hollow Earth, where he would have found mammoths, flying saucers with swastikas and the underground kingdom of Arianni
8. To this day the theory has followers. Even though the entire Vril Society has lost strength, many believe that there are two entrances to the «other Earth» and that powerful governments, such as the US, protect them in secret. They would do this with armed guards and the help of technology – masking and obscuring even satellite imagery, something identifiable by looking at Google Earth screens.
ON THE OTHER HAND
Science says theory is impossible
– According to modern geology, the structure of the Earth is composed of crust, mantle and core. The latter is divided into two parts: external (liquid and composed of iron and nickel) and internal (solid).
– The aurora borealis is formed by the impact of solar wind particles with Earth’s upper atmosphere, channeled by our magnetic field – not “internal fields”
– In order to have the necessary nuclear reactions to produce energy, a star would need to have a mass like that of the Sun, which is 1 million times greater than the Earth and would not fit inside it
– Bulwer-Lytton’s book was, admittedly, a work of fiction
– Hitler was susceptible to conspiracy theories – and the companies did not help, since Henrich Himmler, commander of the SS, believed himself to be the incarnation of a king. Adolf was also fanatical about astrology and various forms of the occult, which served as halfway to his small obsession with the Vril Society.
– Although there are many theories about it, it has never been proven that Hitler fled to Argentina, much less to the center of the Earth
– It has never been proven in a documentary way that there is a passage to the inner part of the Earth – nor that it is guarded by governments
TdF suggested – Laís Dias
Consultancy Denise Dias dos Santos, Bachelor and Licensed in Geography at USP and Master’s student in Physical Geography at USP, and Adilson de Oliveira, professor at the Department of Physics at UFSC
Sources Book Weird Science, by Gregory L. Reece; BBC and School Info websites