Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 14 -- Hollow Earth Geophysics
Because an absolute vacuum was inconceivable, something must fill the intraplanetary void. It
couldn't be air, because near the center, even air would be subject to,
Immense compression [that] would totally derange the powers of elective attraction, and
change the whole form and constitution of bodies.
Rather,
The vast subterranean cavity must be filled with some very diffusive medium, of astonishing
elasticity or internal repulsion among its molecules.
This left only one possibility,
[The] only fluid we know possessing that character is LIGHT itself.
To illustrate Leslie's point, we've added the color yellow.
The American John Cleves Symmes, Jr. (1779-1829), an officer from the
War of 1812, may have learned of Halley’s theory by way of Cotton
Mather’s The Christian Philosopher (1721). To this, Symmes added
entrances 6,600 and 10,000 kilometers in diameter at the two poles,
suffice to allow the expulsion of Leslie's light and the inflow of air.
A confused gravity allows the dwellers
to inhabit either side of each shell. A
ship at the polar hole would simply sail
around the rim and onto the shells
inside ocean, masts now pointing
toward the geo-center. Polar access,
detailed by Max Fyfield, is shown to
the right.
It's all about pressure,
…thus causing a universal pressure, which is weakened by the intervention of other bodies in
proportion to the subtended angle of distance and dimension, necessarily causing the body to
move toward the points of decreased pressure.
In an 1818 circular sent "TO ALL THE WORLD," Symmes proposed,
I declare the earth is hollow, habitable within; containing a number of solid concentric spheres;
one within the other, and that it is open at the pole twelve or sixteen degrees. I pledge my life
in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow if the world will support and aid me
in the undertaking.
I ask one hundred brave companions, well equipped, to start from Siberia in the fall season,
with Reindeer and slays, on the ice of the frozen sea; I engage we find a warm and rich land,
stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals if not men, on reaching one degree north-ward of
latitude 62; we will return in the succeeding spring.
One might wonder about the vegetables, but Symmes was prepared. As flora would require
additional light, there may exist non-polar openings in uninhabited parts of South America,
northern Asia, Canada and Alaska, Iceland and Greenland.
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