Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Theory of Flat Earth and Hollow Earth

Every elementary school student knows that the earth is a solid sphere with slightly flattened poles, and the unimaginable boundless universe surrounds the earth.Few have doubted that the Earth is round since Magellan circumnavigated it in 1519.Yet precisely because this view has become so widely accepted, the shape of the Earth is a fortunate domain for pseudoscientists to indulge their imaginations. There are three outlandish theories about the earth, each of which has had astonishing adherents for several days in this century: one is Voliva's theory of a flat earth; the other is that the world is hollow with openings at the poles; Incredibly, we live inside a hollow sphere.

It is hard to believe that any literate American living in the first decade of the atomic age would doubt that the earth is round.However, there are thousands of such people.Most of them lived in a sleepy little town called Zion in Illinois.The town is located on Lake Michigan, about 40 miles north of Chicago.These people are the remnants of the once prosperous "Zion Christian Apostolic Church".The sect was founded in 1895 by a Scot named John Alexander Dowe, who healed by prayer. Reverend Dowe was removed from his position as "Overseer" of Zion Township in 1905.For the next 30 years, the town of 6,000 was ruled by the iron fist of Weber Glenn Walliwa.The vast majority of the town's citizens work for a million-dollar "Zeon Industries."The company produces a wide variety of goods, from fine lace to needles and thread.No American town has stricter laws against drinking, entertainment, etc. on Sundays than here.People driving past the lake in their cars quickly learned that they could not stop in the village because they risked being arrested or fined if they smoked or whistled on Sunday.

All his life, Voliva believed that the earth was shaped like a scone, with the North Pole in the center and the South Pole on the periphery.He has said for years that he will reward him with $5,000 for anyone who can prove to him that the earth is round.In fact, he has made several trips around the world to promote the subject.Of course, it seemed to him that he was not circling the earth, but merely following a flat circle. According to Voliva, there is a huge wall of ice and snow blocking the ship from sailing off the edge of the earth and falling into the world of the underworld.Under the underworld is a lower underworld, where the souls of the peoples who were once prominent on the earth before Adam's time lived.Stars are much smaller than Earth and revolve around it.The moon shines by itself.As for the sun?Here's what Voliva had to say about the sun:

"It is foolish to think that the sun is millions of miles in diameter and is 91 million miles from the earth. The sun is only 32 miles wide and is no more than 3,000 miles from the earth. It must be so, and it makes perfect sense. God created the sun to To light the earth, he must place it close to that which he serves. What would you think of a man who built a house in Ziontown and went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to install electric lights to light it?" The journal "Leaf of Medicine" run by this sect published a special issue of astronomy on May 10, 1930.The 64-page issue comprehensively expounds various reasons that Voliva put forward based on the "Bible" and science.One of the articles asked: "Can anyone seriously considering this question simply say that he believes that the earth is moving at such an impossible speed? If the earth is going so fast, its direction How? Going forward is easier than going against the opposite direction. And the wind blows in the opposite direction. But, who would believe this statement? A person jumps up, and one second after leaving the ground, he will land 193.7 miles from his original place Otherwise, who would believe such a statement?"

One of the most famous ways to prove that the Earth spins is by using a device called a Foucault pendulum.This pendulum is made with a heavy ball suspended from a very long wire.As the heavy ball swings back and forth, inertia keeps it always on the same swinging plane, while the earth beneath it turns.As a result, the oscillating surface appears to be slowly turning.The above-mentioned article blew up this proof in one breath.The author of the article asks: "If the motion of the earth is related to the motion of the pendulum, why do you push the pendulum? Anyone who has seriously considered this question must see that the real fact is that if the earth If it is spinning as fast as the astronomers say, then the pendulum will fly into space and stay there."

But the highlight of the issue is a photo that spans two pages, showing the 12-mile shoreline of Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin.The caption for the photo reads: Shot with an 8×10 Eastman Scene Camera...the lens is 3 feet above the water...anyone can go to Oshkosh on a clear day to see this for themselves scenery.With a pair of high-power binoculars, you can see very small objects on the opposite bank, which proves beyond doubt that the surface of the lake is flat, or horizontal... This picture is of great scientific value. Owing to the incredible degree of Volivar's ignorance, the psychological motives behind his strange views are easier to see than those of the more brilliant paranoiacs.These bigots engage in biblical and witty polemics while keeping their motives hidden.Volivar's motives are twofold, one is to defend religious dogma, and the other is arrogance, so that he is divorced from reality to the level of a psychopath.The first motive needs no elaboration. Voliva once declared, "We are fundamentalists. We are the only true fundamentalists." Literally, it means that the earth is flat, not round.Moreover, one of the great principles (and, so to speak, the essence) of Doveism is to take every word of the Bible literally.

But to explain Voliva's view of the big picture as nothing more than a reasonable way of interpreting the Bible is only telling one side of the story.Maybe in a bygone era, the whole thing was like that.In the first centuries of religion, before the fact that the earth was round was definitively proved, it was not uncommon to see some brilliant and well-fed theologians preferring to interpret passages of the Old Testament literally. .We can understand, for example, St. Augustine or Martin Luther that it was impossible for man to live under the earth, because then he would not be able to see Christ descending from heaven when he returns.However, people in the twentieth century did not believe that the earth was round.What should we think?

The answer lies in Volivar's hubris.He saw all astronomers as a bunch of "poor, ignorant, self-righteous fools." He boasted at one point, "I could beat anyone in the world to the ground in a battle of wits." Flat out.I have never met a professor or college student with a millionth of my knowledge in any subject. ’ At one point, during an argument in court, he yelled, ‘Anyone who takes on me is doomed.Listen up!The cemetery is full of guys trying to bring down Volivar.Others will be there too.Almighty God will punish them. ’ Although his sect never numbered more than ten thousand, he had the audacity to say, ‘I have just begun my real business.I'm going to preach the Gospel to other states in America, and then to Europe. "

Voliwa often prophesies that the end of the world is coming.He once set 1923, 1927, 1930 and 1935 as the years when the world will end.These years have passed one by one, and his predictions have failed again and again, and the Nine Heavens Court has not been rolled up like a scroll, but he never thinks about what is wrong with his predictions.He died in 1942, another accident.Because he once counted on living to the age of 120 on a special diet of things like Brazil nuts and fatty milk. Today, Zion Township is a different place.Other churches have moved in.Local regulations have been overturned.Girls could wear sun red and nails, and stop being arrested for wearing shorts on Ennoch Avenue in summer.Oddly enough, NYU now owns a dominant stake in Zion Industries.But there are still a few thousand followers of Voliwa, aged in Zion, who lead a peaceful life in this village, who, in the words of their deceased leader, are still "the so-called fundamentalists, ...preoccupied with small matters such as evolution, but not with the big matter of modern astronomy".

While it's hard to find a non-fundamentalist believer in a flat Earth, either in Zion or outside of Zion, it would be wrong to think that all oddities about the shape of the Earth come from religious superstition.In recent centuries, there is no better example of a statement that is not religious than the Hollow in the Earth statement by Captain John Cleves Sims of the United States Infantry.Sims rose to prominence for his bravery in the War of 1812 and later retired from the Army.He spent the rest of his life convincing Americans that the Earth was made up of five concentric spheres with openings thousands of miles in diameter at the poles.

He initially announced his theory in 1818, sending out a circular letter enlisting 100 "brave companions" to join him in a polar expedition to the north to explore an opening that would soon be known as "Sims Hole" .The army captain was convinced that the sea flows through openings at the poles.In the concave interior of the sphere and the convex surface of the next sphere, flora and fauna are thriving and full of vitality. The more people ridicule Sims' theories, the more indignant he becomes, and the harder he seeks to find "facts" to back up his ideas.He was simply possessed.He spent 10 years traveling all over the United States.Stuttering around in a thick nasal voice, trying to raise money for his voyage. In 1822 and 1823, he again petitioned Congress to appropriate expenses for his travels.His application was silently put on hold, but his second application won 25 votes in favor. In 1829, he was overworked with oratory and broke down physically.Died in Hamilton, Ohio, where he had settled.Here, one can also see a weather-worn monument erected to him by his son, with a model of a hollowed-out Earth carved out of stone. A comprehensive introduction to Sims' strange views can be found in two books.One is "Sims' Theory of Concentric Spheres" written by James McBride, the captain's number one student, in 1826; the other was published by his son, Americas Sims, in 1878. "Sims' Concentric Spheres Theory".In order to clarify the theory of the hollow earth, these two books put forward hundreds of reasons based on physics, astronomy, climatology, animal migration habits, and travelers' reports.Not limited to this, the book also said that a hollow planet, like the hollow bones of the human body, is a solid and economical way for the Creator to arrange all things.As one disciple said, "A hollow earth, in which people could live, would save a great deal of material." The captain's son concluded, "Reason, common sense, and everything of the like in nature, support This theory makes it established." Sims' belief had nothing to do with the science of the time.However, these beliefs have had a strong influence on science fiction. In 1820, an anonymous author, under the pseudonym of Captain Seaborne, published a fantasy novel about the Hollow Earth called Simzonia.Here's an interesting story, to the effect that a steamship sailed toward the Antarctic opening, where a strong current sucked the ship past "the edge of the world."Captain Seaborne discovered a continent in the recessed interior of the Earth and named it "Simzonia".There he met a friendly race, dressed in white, with voices as beautiful as music, living in an ideal socialist state.Edgar Allan Poe's unfinished The Tale of Arthur Gordon Pym describes a voyage of this kind.Jules Verne may not have been influenced by Sims' theories, however, many later novels and dozens of short stories are based on his theories. Do Sims' perceptions come from legends of the past?No basis, although Cotton Mather defended a similar theory in 1721 in The Christian Philosopher.Mather's own theory, in turn, was inspired by an article published in 1692 by the famous English astronomer Edmund Halley (after whom Halley's comet is named).Halley said that the earth has a shell 500 miles thick, the two inner layers are equivalent in diameter to Mars and Venus, and the innermost one is a solid sphere the size of Mercury.He believed that life could exist on every layer.There may be some "special luminaries" shining there, the light of eternal day, like the one placed in heaven by the Roman poet Virgil, or perhaps the atmosphere between the layers of the earth's crust is itself luminous. When the brilliant Northern Lights appeared in 1716, Halley said, they were probably created when that glowing gas escaped.Because the earth is flat at the poles, the outer crust is naturally thinner, and he deduced that there is a possibility for gas to escape at the poles. A resident of Aurora, Illinois, named Marshall Gardner, was in charge of machine maintenance in a large factory that made women's corsets. In 1913, he published a pamphlet at his own expense, entitled Journey into the Interior of the Earth.This booklet talks a lot like Sims' Hollow Earth.If anyone says that his idea is to plagiarize the theory of the predecessors, the author will lose his temper. In 1920, he expanded the pamphlet into a 456-page book. Gardner disagreed with Sims' "whimsy" of multi-layered concentric spheres.He insisted that only the outer crust exists.The outer shell is 800 miles thick, and the hollow interior houses a sun, 600 miles in diameter, which keeps the interior perpetually daylight.There are openings at the poles, each 1400 miles across.The structure of other planets is also the same.The so-called ice caps on Mars are actually openings through which occasional flashes of the sun can be seen within.On Earth, the Northern Lights are formed when light emerges from an opening in the North Pole. Frozen mammoths found in Siberia came from the interior of the Earth, where there may still be living mammoths.The Eskimos also come from the interior of the earth. According to their legends, it is said that there is a place where the summer never ends.There is a chapter describing an imaginary journey across the globe, entering through an opening at one pole and exiting through an opening at another pole.Accompanied by a beautiful color illustration showing the inner sun of the earth shining above the level of a vast ocean as the ship approaches the gigantic edge.This book uses 7 chapters to describe the previous expeditions to the North Pole.Of course, Gardner testifies, none of the explorers ever actually got there. The author admits that he doesn't expect his views to be "fairly heard" because "some scientists are conservative and unwilling to revise their theories, especially when new discoveries require such revisions, . . . This discovery did not come from some well-known institutions of higher learning."These scientists, he wrote poignantly, "are very professionally well-heeled. If you're not one of them, they don't want to hear your opinion." But, ultimately, he believed the public would accept his views, It will also force these scientists to do so. He made it very clear that he didn't want Chi to be confused with a fake scientist like Sims, because that view wasn't based on solid facts. "Of course, for the formation of the earth, anyone can do it casually without acknowledging all scientific facts and putting forward some kind of purely personal explanation. Such people are paranoid."Like all paranoid scientists, Gardner always believed that he was an underappreciated genius, temporarily ridiculed, but the honor should belong to him after all.He always compared himself to Galileo.He believed that the world's attention had been distracted by the First World War, so that his early works were not taken seriously. Ironically, less than six years after Gardner published his expensive, revised book, Richard Bird flew across the North Pole.Of course, there was no opening there.So Gardner stopped giving speeches and writing articles, but when he died in 1937.Still convinced that his theory has some value. Whether it's Sims' theory or Gardner's in another way, it's absurd, but what's more, this is another American Cyrus Reed Teed put forward in 1870. kind of opinion.For 38 years, Teed persisted.Constantly giving speeches and writing articles.Defending his theory: the earth is hollow and we live inside it! Teed's early life is unknown.Born in 1839 on a farm in Delaware County, New York, he was a devout Baptist in his youth.Served in the Union Army during the Civil War and was attached to a field hospital.Later, he graduated from the Eclectic School of Medicine in New York and practiced in Utica, New York (Eclectic medicine is a well-known superstition therapy in the last century, mainly relying on some worthless herbs to treat diseases). Copernican's teachings that space is infinite and that there are many giant suns must have terrified young Teed.He wholeheartedly wanted to restore the universe to what he knew in the "Bible": small and tight like a palace.He could not doubt that the earth was round, because sailors had sailed around it.Sure enough, where is the end of the space?If it is said that space is endless and boundless, it is simply unimaginable. Sitting alone in the middle of the night in 1869 in a laboratory built in Utica for the study of alchemy, he witnessed an apparition.His pamphlet, "The Revelation of Corisi: A Strange Experience of the Great Alchemist of Utica, New York," gives a detailed description of the apparition.A beautiful woman talks to him, telling him of his previous incarnations and his destiny to be a new savior.She also revealed to him the true mystery of the origin of the universe. The secret is simple: we live inside the earth.Astronomers were right to a certain extent, but they turned everything inside out. Doesn't the Bible say that God "measured the waters in the palm of his hand"? (Isaiah 40:12) The more Teed thought about it, the more he believed it to be true. In 1870, under the name Kolisi (Hebrew, the same as Cyrus), he published "The Origin of the Honeycomb Universe", in which he outlined his new revelations about astronomy. Teed said that the whole universe is like an egg.We live on the surface of the inner layer of the eggshell, and in the hollow there are the sun, moon, stars, planets and comets.What's out there?Absolutely nothing, the interior is everything.People can't see through it because the atmosphere is so dense.This shell is 100 miles thick and consists of 17 layers.The innermost 5 layers are geological layers, the bottom is 5 layers of mineral layers, and the bottom is 7 layers of metal layers.The sun living in the center of space is invisible, and the sun we see is only its reflection.The sun in the center is half bright and half dark.The rotation of the sun causes the sunrise and sunset in our illusion.The moon is the reflection of the earth, and the planets are the reflected light from "the disks of mercury floating between the metallic plane layers."Therefore, those celestial bodies that we see are not material, but are just focal points of light.Teed relied on the laws of optics to study the properties of these objects in great detail. Foucault's pendulum takes up an entire chapter.He wrote, "The wonderful thing about this experiment is that it is obligatory for anyone who wants to get any title of science." Teed's theory was that the swing of the pendulum was due to the influence of the sun.He concludes that the whole issue is "absolute nonsense, and these 'scientists' will laugh at their own stupidity in the future." It is true that the earth appears to be a convex sphere, but according to Teed this is entirely an illusion of optics.If you take the trouble to extend the horizon very, very far, you will find that the earth is curved upwards.This experiment was actually carried out in 1897 by the Curisi Geodetic Department on the coast of Florida Bay.Subsequent editions of this book contain several photographs of this brilliant group of bearded scientists at work.Using a set of three T-squares (Ted called the device a "straightener"), they extended a straight line for four miles along the coast, and finally into the sea.A similar experiment was carried out the previous year on the old drainage canal in Illinois. Like most pseudoscientists who try to impress readers with their scientific knowledge, Teed has a tendency to use arcane language.He says, for example, that planets are "spherical solids held together by a constant flow of matter incoming and outgoing..." while comets are entirely "consisted of the Korusek 'force' which is due to the The chromatic matter is produced when the electromagnetic circuits are dissipated and the matter is compressed when the conduits of the sun's 'energy' and the moon's 'energy' are opened." Teed vehemently attacked "orthodox" scientists as "charlatans" and "charlatans" who mistook their deceitful research for science to "deceive the gullible public."Teed's paranoia was at its peak.He devotes a whole chapter to blaming his enemies for "unreasonable opposition" and "stubborn resistance."He likes to compare himself (as almost every pseudo-scientist does) to the great innovators of the past whose views were unacceptable. "It is as unreasonable, ridiculous and ridiculous as to openly oppose the works of Harvey and Galileo in the past, just like an idiot." On another page, he writes, "We have gone to great lengths to put the question of Kolisi cosmology in the hands of the people for ever and for public discussion. The most virulent repression is the inevitable fate of all who propose innovations to the views prevailing in the public... We have put our developed into a cosmological science. . . . " The following passage is his inner confession, which is also the most startling, "...to know that the earth is concave...is to know God, but to believe that the earth is convex is to deny God, which means to deny all his creation. To oppose the Curisi doctrine is to be the anti-Christ" It should come as no surprise that Teed is messianic.Not surprisingly, he practiced medicine in Utica, where he was known as "The Crazy Doctor," and his business went downhill.His wife was confused and sick, and died after giving birth to a son (his only son, Douglas Teed, later became a famous artist and portrait painter in the American South).Later, "the apostle Cyrus" (as he called himself at the time) finally gave up his practice of medicine, and set out to preach his new revelation. As an orator, he must be a good hand.In Chicago, his followers were so enamored and devoted to him that he was able to stay there until 1886, founding a "School of Life" and a magazine called Guiding Star (and soon Fire Sword Magazine).He later founded the Corisi Association, a small society in a building on the Avenue of the Villas. The Chicago Herald in 1894 credited him with 4,000 followers and said he raised $60,000 from preaching meetings in California alone. The paper described Corisi as "a short, clean-shaven man of fifty-four, with brown eyes that swiveled like two coals . . . They have a strange fascination, especially with female believers." In later years, he always wore a Prince Vilbert jacket, black trousers, a white silk bow tie, and a wide-brimmed black fedora hat. .Three of his four disciples were women. In Carl Kammer's 1949 book Black Trees to the Wind, there is a wonderful chapter on the "Curisi Doctrine" where one of the members talks about why he got into the movement by saying some words.These remarks suggest that the desire to return to the womb may have played a large role in the success of this superstitious cult.This man was a barber at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago. One day in 1900, when he was walking on the street, he saw a large sign that said "We live in a shell".There was a Han Yu who was speaking to a small group of people on the street while selling "Fire Sword".The barber bought a copy."I was lying in bed that night reading the magazine, and before I fell asleep, I fell into my shell," he said. In the 1890s, Corisi acquired a piece of land 16 miles south of Fort Myers, Florida.There he established the town of Estero.He called it the "New Jerusalem" and predicted that the town would one day become the capital of the world.Everything here is arranged to accommodate 8 million believers.Around 200 people came.But despite constant cynicism in some of the newspapers in nearby towns, the men managed to keep the little colony afloat. Teed's death in 1908 caused trouble.He was killed by an attack by Fort Myers marshals.Teed once wrote a book called The Immortal Man.In his book he taught that he would ascend "after his physical death" and that he would take with him all the faithful men and women who believed in him. On the day of his death on December 22, members of the settlement stopped their work and continued to pray to the body.Two days later, Korisi's body showed signs of decomposition.Christmas has come and gone.County health officials finally intervened and ordered the remains to be buried. Teed's followers buried their beloved leader in a concrete tomb on Estero Island, just outside the bay. 1921.A tropical hurricane hit the island, sending up huge waves, destroying the tombs and leaving no bones. The pretty little magazine of the zealots, The Fire Sword, which said nothing about Teed's death in 1908, continued to print until late 1949, when the colony's printing plant was destroyed by fire. A 1946 issue pointed out that Teed's insights into alchemy were the precursor to the atomic bomb. In 1947, only 12 of this group of believers did not leave.They are fighting over property rights. In Germany, Teed's work provided the basis for the widespread counterculture fervor of the Nazi movement.This is the so-called hollow-earth theory first proposed by Peter Bender.Bender was a German pilot who was seriously injured in World War I.Bender maintained long-term ties with the Korisiites until his death in a Nazi prison camp.His research work is still carried out in Germany, mainly by Karl Neupert.Neupert's "Earth Universe" is the most important textbook for this group of fanatics. In the United States, after 60 years of heroic fighting, the Sword of Fire has finally died down.Its last issue contained an article angrily referring to a photograph of some Utah salt flats published by Life magazine.The intention is to show that the Earth is a convex shape. The editors of "Fire Sword" once wrote to "Life" magazine to point out one of the mistakes. "Life" wrote back.However, the editors of "Fire Sword" believed that the reply letter was deliberately evasive and evasive.