Hollow planets

This idiotic theory doesn’t deserve it, kao, but I’ll respond to these absurd claims:

"1. The Earth and the Moon both ring like a bell long after meteor impacts and earthquakes."

And a water-filled ball doesn’t ring??? Some of those impacts were big enough to have punched a hole right thru to your imaginary hollow center; how did the holes repair themselves? Why didn’t gravity collapse the whole spherical shell, once it’s structural integrity was compromised by a big meteor?

"2. Recent research has shown that the Aurora Borealis is caused not by the sun but by enormous outgassings from the poles."

If gas is escaping from the hollow center, I guess that means the crust is collapsing inward and forcing the gas out. Oh my God! We’re doomed! Well, maybe you are referring to the dissolved gasses that bubble out of lava when the pressure is released. How is that not compatible with the widely accepted view of the planet’s composition? Link please.

"3. NO scientist or drilling company has ever reached the mantle. Despite the deepest hole of 40,000 ft."

Nor have they ever broken thru to a hollow center, which would be a whole lot more obvious.

"4. The current theory amounting to the existence of solid mantle is the equivalent to telling what type of furniture is in a house by using a stethascope. See waveguide phenomena such as "whistlers" and apply that to the fact that seismic waves will be distorted by bouncing through the crust."

It’s the equivalent of telling the sex of a fetus by ultrasound.

"5. Nearly every ancient culture claims to have emerged from underground caves. And most ancient temples (pyramids, etc.) have deep underground tunnels beneath them."

The closest myth I know of is a South American tribe which actually raises its children in the total darkness of a cave until they emerge at puberty. That cave is high in the Andes—hardly a portal to the inner Earth. How deep are those tunnels under the pyramids, etc? Reference, please!

"6. Vortex theory- The center of a hurricane is hollow. The center of a wirlpool is hollow. The center of a tornado is hollow. All exhibit EMF generation. When a planet forms, the lighter hot elements will condense into a core of GAS as they cool. The heavier elements get thrown out by centrifugal force forming a crust. What's left is an inner sun and an outer crust, with no mantle."

There is no centrifugal force on the poles, so why isn’t the Earth shaped like a doughnut? A hurricane, whirlpool or tornado is hollow because the wind is faster, and centrifugal force greater, near the center. A galaxy is a vortex; notice that it is more like a disk than a ball; that’s because there is no centrifugal force pulling the poles outward. A galaxy is densest near the center—not hollow in the center. For heavier elements to gravitate outward, centrifugal force would have to dominate. For centrifugal force to equal gravity at the equator, the Earth would have to rotate once in 40 minutes instead of 24 hours. The Earth would have to be fluid for the center to spin faster than the crust; once it starts to solidify, centrifugal force becomes less toward the center, so heavier materials then gravitate toward the center.

"7. Recent videos from SOHO show definitively that the surface of the sun is solid! Don't expect NASA to inform you look for yourself. I watched the videos a hundred times over. There is a triangular crytaline structure to the sun."

Is this your own gut feeling from having watched a video? Link please!

"8. Current theory suggests that the earth's core rages a mighty 5,000 degrees celsius. This means that the only form a substance may take at the core is that of plasma. Does your plasma reflect sound waves like a solid? What is your authority for this “plasma” claim?"

Didn’t you just say the Sun’s surface is solid? It’s about 6,000 degrees C? Which is it? Plasma or solid?

They call the Earth’s core a “pressure solid”. At a given temperature, increased pressure can melt a solid, like ice skates melting the ice. In theory, a whole lot more pressure can make it solidify again. Direct observation of a pressure solid is not possible, because no instruments can withstand that kind of pressure. They deduce that the core is a pressure solid from the fact that sound waves reflect off the boundary in the same way they reflect at the boundary between a solid and a liquid.

"9. Given the hollow earth theory one can explain the cause of every myth, legend, and war in all of history. The NAZIs held a strong beleif that the earth was hollow. See "The Black Sun" I don't know the author but I saw it at my library."

Can you give even one example of a myth, legend or war that is explained by your theory? Can you explain how it is explained? Which NAZI’s? The author of <i>The Black Sun </i>is William Jackson, who also wrote <i>Amazing Stories</i> and many other sci-fi books, with the emphasis on “fi”.

"10. Search the net for a month as I did looking for satellite PHOTOGRAPHS of the artic sea. They barely exist. There are supposed to be enormous holes in the crust that provide entrance into the earth. 99% of the satelite images out there are composite images not photographs. Of 1,000+ images of the arctic I have found 3 photographs. 2 of which show a largw cicular depression. 1 is covered with ice. These pictures have since vanished from their original sources. Why?"

Maybe because there is nothing there to photograph but water, ice and an occasional whale or polar bear. Why waste resources on something that is of no interest to anyone except those who believe in a hollow theory?

"11. Recent PHOTOGRAPHS of Mars, and Saturn, both show the same phenomena."

So we have photos of it there but not on Earth? Reference please.

"12. Both Mars and Saturn both have Auroras."

So?

"13. North and south pole Auroras occur simultaneously."

So?

"14. The Van Allen belts exhibit the same hollow torus shape."

So?

"15. Of all the explorers to the Arctic sea, most if not all are certain that there's a lost land up there. Admiral Byrd himself said that he flew there. Who's he? Only the first man ever to fly over the North Pole. On another trip to Antartica he and all of the crew on board the fleet of battleships that went there, reported being attacked by UFO's. I can't make this **** up. This is out of the mouth of a rear admiral of the armed forces not some cooky farmer boy."

Admiral Byrd is a poor representative of "most or all explorers". Byrd was a social-climbing publicity hound who valued credit for discovery more than discovery, itself. He flat out lied about flying to the North Pole. He merely circled long enough to say he’d been there so he could bask in glory and make his wife happy. It's only American nationalism that prevents official renouncement of Byrd's claims. UFO Area (presumably one of your sources) says that Byrd claimed to have discovered 2300 miles of land south of the South Pole. I don’t doubt that Byrd would have made such a preposterous claim; if he was silenced, it was to protect him from well-deserved ridicule.

"16. There is an expedition planned to go to the inner earth in the summer of 2006. For $20,000 you can reserve a seat. I don't even have patience for people who think I'm making this up."

One born every minute! Would you be interested in home site at beautiful Sunny Acres at 120 degrees south latitude; half price today only; just $5000 an acre; cash only, no refunds.

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According to, UFO Area :

“Captain John Cleves Symmes (1779-1829) believed that the earth's interior was hollow, containing another four hollow, concentric spheres, with space between each, and habitable on both their concave and convex surfaces...”

That might sound plausible to a gullible child, but according to the law of gravity, the only net gravity inside one of those hollow spheres (if they could exist) would be the gravity from the other spheres closer to the center; so if you were on the concave surface, you’d fall off.

I’d like to know what fraction of the Earth’s volume is supposed to be hollow. If half the volume is empty, the shell, on average must be twice as dense as the whole to account for our gravity. Since we know the surface layers are far less dense than the average, then the inner side of a hollow crust would have to be far denser than the outside of the crust. Didn’t you say the denser materials are on the outside?

Earthquake seismology can't give a clear picture of the planets solidity. There are roughly spheric layers with a different propagation speed for seismic waves. The waves get deflected like the soundwaves whales use to communicate over thousands of kilometers or like the radiosignals amateurs use when there are sporadic conditions.

I think the earthcore is high temperature, high pressure with thermonuclear processes going on. The effect of gravity plays no role in the core. If you were in a capsule right in the middle of the earth (the horror) you would feel weightless. Heavy elements wouldn't compress there, they would mix with lighter ones. Gaseous material would still have a gigantic density due to the pressure.
Calling that a hollow planet seems like a stretch to me.

[Michiel] "The effect of gravity plays no role in the core."

This is wrong.

[Michiel] " If you were in a capsule right in the middle of the earth (the horror) you would feel weightless."

This is right.

[Michiel] " Heavy elements wouldn't compress there, they would mix with lighter ones. Gaseous material would still have a gigantic density due to the pressure."

Q) How can light (low mass) elements be compressed by the pressure at the core but not heavy (high mass) elements?

Regards,
LB

Hehe, I wasn't very clear there, Larry. Let's try again..

High mass doesn't add more to compression then low mass when there's no gravity. Like a pillow filled with feathers and lead shot in orbit: the materials mix.
The compression comes from all mass surrounding the core. As gravity increases, moving out from the core, the bigger the contribution to compression will be.

Michiel,

If your pillow is smaller than a bed I'd be inclined to agree that stuff mixes.

If your pillow is the size of a planet, the lead and the feathers will separate (*) in a process known as pressure differentiation induced by gravitational force. Lower mass clumps of stuff will rise (like drops of oil in a jar of water when a gravitational field or equivalent is present) and higher mass clumps of stuff will descend (like drops of water in a jar of oil when a gravitational field or equivalent is present).

Near the center gravitational force declines and this process becomes less efficient. But all that means is that it takes longer to reach a given percentage of differentiation.

The presence of one or more moons orbiting the pillow will speed up the process, especially near the surface, by "stiring the pot".

LB

(*) Please note that not every lead pellet will end up closer to the center than every feather. (There will always be some mixing in the real world.) And of course pressure means heat. Feathers will burn and lead pellets will melt if they get hot enough. But we could pick some other materials to talk about if these details bother you.

Gravity 101 is in session:

For simplisity sake, let's talk first about a spherical homogenius planet---i.e., uniform density. Gravity outside the surface is proportional to the inverse square of distance from the center. Inside such a sphere, gravity is directly proportional to the distance from the center. Inside, the graph is a straight line from zero at the center to maximum at the surface; outside , it is a curved line decreasing to zero at infinity.

Now, let's talk about a heterogenius planet---i.e., a mixture of different densities, randomly distributed in various sized lumps. Initially, its gravity graph would be just like that of a homogenius planet except for some slight roughness. There would be a tendency for heavier materials to sink, just as water sinks in oil or sea water sinks in fresh water. (Of course gravity does not seperate mutually soluble materials as effectively, because then it must work on molecules instead of huge volumes.) As the heavier materials sink, the core becomes denser, so the gravity graph becomes a steeper line in the denser core, and less steep in the lighter mantle and crust. During this process, gravity is doing a lot of work which heats the planet, keeping it in a liquid state. The fact that our planet is still hot, long after the heavier and lighter materials settled, suggests the presence of other internal heat sources.

True, there is less gravity near the center and zero gravity at the center; that means the process of sinking and floating is slower in the liquid core. If the inner core is solid, that means sinking and floating within the inner core has stopped---probably billions of years ago, before the planet reached its present size and mass.

Thermal processes within the liquid core produce vertical currents. The currents try to send denser materials upward with limited effectiveness. The net result of these currents is to aid the process of gravitational differentiation until an equilibrium is reached; once in equilibrium, you have occasional bits of dense material hitching a ride toward the surface in a stream of hotter and lighter material.

At no time, in the process described above, was centrifugal force relevant; centrifugal force at the equator today is about <s>1/36</s> [see edit below] as strong as gravity. Outside the planet, centrifugal force increases and gravity decreases; the two forces cancel each other at a distance of 36,000 km above the equator, which is where communication satellites reside in geostationary orbit.

Going deeper inside the planet in the equatorial plane, centrifugal force decreases in direct proportion to the distance from the center; gravity decreases more slowly at first and faster as density increases. Away from the equatorial plane, centrifugal force is proportional to distance from the polar axis; its direction is radially away from the axis. Centrifugal force does affect the shape of the planet; it causes the equator to bulge outward, giving an equatorial diameter of 12,760 km and a polar diameter of 12,720 km. That's a far cry from hollow!

[EDIT 9/14/05: Oops! What was I thinking? In very rough terms, gravity and centrifugal forces cancel at 6 Earth radii, where gravity is 1/36 g; therefore, on the equator, centrifugal force is not 1/36 g (as I originally posted), but 1/256 g. To be a little more precise: Gravity and centrifugal forces cancel at 6.64 Earth radii, where gravity is 1/44.1 g; therefore centrifugal force on the equator is 1/293 g. That sounds more reasonable, since the equatorial diameter is roughly 1/300th larger than the polar diameter.]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Earthquake seismology can't give a clear picture of the planets solidity. There are roughly spheric layers with a different propagation speed for seismic waves. The waves get deflected like the soundwaves whales use to communicate over thousands of kilometers or like the radiosignals amateurs use when there are sporadic conditions. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Any whale will tell you; solids are easily distinguishable from liquids because there are no transverse waves in a liquid.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Gaseous material would still have a gigantic density due to the pressure.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Not even hydrogen can exist as a gas at that temperature and pressure.