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Piltdown
Skeptic Friend
USA
312 Posts |
 Posted - 07/28/2001 : 16:07:41
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This one is a veritable supermarket of geo-weirdness: http://www.onelight.com/
One of the few features that is not directly selling something is an interview with hollow earth claimant Dennis Crenshaw. Crenshaw has to invoke the standard conspiracy theory, and lame disclaimer:
quote:
First Greg, as I've told you before, I do not know whether the earth is hollow or not. My stand on the subject is that science should be more open minded. They should admit that the accepted theory of a mantle, molten core, solid core is just that, a theory. Using establishment scientific findings I've been able to illustrate that the Hollow Earth Theory is just as possible as the accepted theory. My argument is that the possibility should at least be explored.
The echoes of creationism are obvious.
The possibility of a hollow earth is not being explored because seismological observations, replicated millions of times, have eliminated it from consideration. How does Crenshaw think we can locate earthquakes anywhere in the world as soon as they happen? It is easily demonstrated that shockwaves pass through different materials at different speeds. Even creation pseudoscientists can probably devise an experiment to prove this. Our demonstrated ability to locate earthquakes depends on these differences being known. Needless to say, the basic structure of the Earth's interior is among the best established facts in science. The experiments and observations that confirm it are easily and frequently replicated. All you need is a seismometer and some math. The theory of gravity would also have to be overthrown for hollow earth proponents to be right ("Gee, it's only a theory").
Crenshaw has been doing this for years. At one time, he was also a flat earther. Apparently, he even published flat earth and hollow earth newsletters simultaneously.
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar series, set in a hollow earth, was (and still is) one of my favorites. Tarzan at the Earth's Core combined two of his fantasy series and may be the best of the lot. Burroughs was an intelligent and rational man, he knew that such a thing was impossible, and he assumed that his readers knew it. That was part of the fun. Burroughs, who died in 1950, was very familiar with the cranks who claimed some kind of reality for the hollow earth. They wrote to him all the time. Could he have imagined that they would still be at it, more profitably than ever, in the 21st century?
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