The Myth of the Hollow Earth: Some Myths Never Die

Yes, we see it every day; some myths never die.

A gargoyle.

People need to believe in something. We need fairies, unicorns, angels, demons, mermaids, dragons, goddesses, winged horses, gargoyles, etc.

The same thing happens in science: no matter the advances in astronomy people keep searching and reading their daily horoscope. If this makes them self-assured and happy, its OK. Why destroy their illusions? Maybe myths are an inherent need deep within us.

However, the myth of the hollow Earth is another type of myth, because it is a showdown, a confrontation between physics and traditional beliefs. But physics, or geography, or geology do not work this way. Solid hypotheses and experimentation to confirm the experiments are needed.


There are many variations of the hollow Earth idea:

Some people still think that the Earth is hollow.

• The Edmund Halley's idea that the Earth's inside is made up of concentric hollow spheres and four poles. For Halley, the spheres' diameters are in proportion to some planet orbits.
• The Cleves Symmes's idea that the Earth is made up of concentric—not as Halley postulated-- but with a strong will to go himself into the Earth's core.
• The Cyrus Reed Teed's concept that the Universe was inside the Earth's crust cradled 'in the hands of God."
• The William Reed dream-concept that the Earth's interior is warm and with volcanoes as in the outside.

But believe it or not, some of those ideas still survive. Some people are making plans to travel to the North Pole to take a look at the entrance to the interior of the Earth.

See the complete article and more in: What do you know about the hollow Earth and the hollow Moon?

Alice in Wonderland

Alice In Wonderland is based on real characters.

Is the girl shown here in this oil paint Alice Liddell, the main character of Alice in Wonderland, the all-time hit in the children and adult's literature?

(Picture: One Summer's Day by William Brymner - 1884)

Maybe not, but the picture title and the walking little girl are evocative of the dedication that Lewis Carroll made for Alice in the book he wrote for Alice Liddell, which at this time he titled: Alice's Adventures Under Ground.

In fact, Lewis Carroll wrote the following dedication in the manuscript he handled to Alicia in November of 1864:

A Christmas Gift
to Dear Child
in Memory
of a Summer Day

Now you can download Alice in Wonderland in EBook format from Datum.

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.

This masterpiece of the children's literature is more than a fantastic narrative from the imagination of a prolific writer, photographer, and mathematician. Alice in Wonderland is also the product of an epoch in the search for new horizons in the science.

Previous to Alice in Wonderland, Ludvig Holberg, near a century before, in 1741, wrote an adventure story about a character that goes down a cave to explore the underground world: Niel’s Klim’s Underground Travels. And in 1692, Edmund Halley, a British astronomer, and mathematician put forth the idea of a hollow Earth when he tried to explain the deviations of the magnetic field of the Earth,

Not to mention that Athanasius Kircher, in 1664 published a geological and geographical investigation that culminated with his Mundus Subterraneus (Subterranean World) in which he suggested that the ocean tides were caused by water moving to and from a subterranean ocean.

Niels Klim's Journey Under The Ground.

Almost simultaneously with Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, in France, Jules Verne, in 1864, published his Journey to the Interior of the Earth.

So, the idea of a “habitable” underground was not new to the fiction and fantastic literature writers, and possibly Lewis Carroll was related with some of those published works.