When I was a little girl, the concept of conspiracy theories intrigued me. I liked the idea that people questioned what they were told, not quick to believe what the majority preached. Eventually, those who crafted these theories soon took it out of hand, basing their philosophies on “what if’s,” blatantly ignoring the facts presented.

As my curiosity for this childhood fixation continued, I began intensive research into the concept of conspiracy theories, a topic I thought I knew everything about. I observed theory after theory and all they were was false speculation. One theory caught my attention as I scrolled through pages and pages of conspiracies, one by the title of Hollow Earth.

For hundreds of years, some conspiracy theorists have made efforts to prove that there is a whole other world right beneath us, a “concave hollow Earth” or “skycentrism.” Generations of theorists have hypothesised that there are other humans that live on the inside surface of a hollow spherical world (earth), so that a universe lies inside that world’s interior. It is believed that the only way one can enter into this hollow Earth is a hole, one located on both the North and South poles.

Evidence of Hollow Earth can be found throughout history, in stories from many different civilizations. Those of you who took AP World History might recall the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh, who visited his ancestor Utnapishtim in the depths of the earth. In Greek mythology Orpheus attempted to rescue his lover Eurydice from the grasp of Hades in hell, and Buddhists believe in an underground Paradise called Agatha, ruled by the king of the world is the Earth’s core. Conspiracy theorists use these stories as evidence to back up their claims, yet many people are still skeptical.  

Non-believers ask how a concave world would even be possible. How could it sustain life? I was interested to find that scientists have recently discovered a water tank-like body of water inside the Earth’s mantle that could fill our oceans up three times. This breakthrough proposes that the surface water of our planet came from within the Earth, questioning the popular belief that water emerged on Earth from icy comets that passed by the planet millions of years back. Evidence has also been found of an “Inner Sun” heating up Earth from the inside.

Although this theory does have evidence, I believe that it certainly does not have solid proof, and its claims contain no correlation or relevance. Folktales, legends, and fairy tales speak of worlds inside our earth, but all they are is fiction. Evidence of water and heat sources inside Earth’s mantle may be scientifically possible. However, this is no reason to believe they can sustain life beneath Earth’s surface.

There are many other scientific concepts that this theory defies and ignores. For example, the force of gravity is pulling so strongly on our planet that it would be impossible for the interior to be hollow because it would completely collapse. Also, the theory of gravity suggests that if a human were on the inside of the planet, they would be practically weightless proved by Newton’s Shell Theorem. This theorem mathematically predicts that if the earth were hollow, there would be a gravitational force of zero everywhere inside the Earth.

There are countless other theories that follow this same pattern. Evidence is NOT proof.  It cannot be denied that those who truly believe in this ideology believe they have a valid rationale, but I for one believe in facts and the laws of science which are being completely ignored. “Well, you can’t prove it isn’t real” seems to be the only response given when evidence against a theory is presented, a defense mechanism. Therefore, I currently am unconvinced in this idea of Hollow Earth and will continue to refute this theory until someone can prove me otherwise.