Traveling in time: to the depths of the earth - 100 years since the death of Jules Verne

Jules Verne often described unique journeys in his books, which over the years proved to be ahead of their time. The adventure described in "Journey to the bowels of the earth" still sounds like a science fiction plot, but it is based on fascinating theories, some of which are still held today

Chazi Yitzhak

On 26/3 it was one hundred years since the death of Jules Verne. Second article in the series courtesy of Paspartour-time travelers magazine

In 1864, Jules Verne published his book "Journey to the Belly of the Earth", which is considered one of his greatest successes (and was later adapted into a successful Hollywood film). The book describes the adventures of a geology professor, his young nephew and an Icelandic companion, Shaktan, in his amazing journey to the center of the earth - a journey that begins in the crater of an inactive volcano called Sneffels, and ends with a volcanic eruption in the Stromboli volcano, located in Sicily. During the journey, the heroes discover a large sea infested with strange fish and dinosaurs that have not gone extinct, discover giant mushrooms and even get to see a giant man herding a herd of mammoths.

Reality or imagination?
Vern often described unique journeys in his books, which over the years turned out to be ahead of their time, such as the journey to the moon, the journey in the Nautilus submarine and the journey to the North Pole. At the same time, today's reader of "Journey to the Belly of the Earth" feels that Shoren has sailed far towards the realms of imagination and that the plot he weaves is science fiction devoid of any grip on reality.
This kind of reference does not correspond to the vision of Verne and Etzel (his publisher), who through the "Wonderful Journeys" series sought to "summarize all the geographical, geological, physical and astronomical knowledge accumulated by modern science, and report on it in a picturesque and entertaining manner ” (as Etzel said).
In this article I will try to show that before Jules Verne's eyes stood the theory of the 'Hollow Earth Theory', which formed the scientific background of his book. A concept presented at the beginning of the book by Professor Lindbrook - "... geologists have always wondered about the shape of the center of the earth, but no one has been able to prove the existence of hot gases there. In my opinion the center of the earth does not boil; Simply put, it is not possible. However, we will go and see for ourselves..."

The hollow earth
The 'hollow earth' theory was developed by quite famous scientists, and some still hold to it. At the same time, their opinions are considered among the members of the scientific community as curiosities that do not require serious consideration.
The first to come up with this idea was the famous astronomer Edmond Halley (1742-1656), who at the end of the 17th century participated in British naval research expeditions to Africa and America. He found that the magnetic deviation changes throughout the year and tried to present a theory that would explain this. According to him, the Earth consists of several inner spheres, on which there are additional magnetic poles. Thus, a slow rotation of the inner spheres, can explain the observed movement of the magnetic poles. Among his other hypotheses, he proposed the possibility that the inner atmosphere inside the Earth is illuminated, or that there are small suns in it. Later , the Scottish mathematician Sir John Lesley proposed the existence of two suns, which he called 'Pluto' and 'Proserpina', after the god of the underworld and his wife in Greek mythology.

Following the theories
Over the years, various scientists have adopted the hollow earth theory and it has continued to evolve. For example, the Swiss mathematician Leonard Euler replaced Halley's theory of spheres with one hollow sphere, inside which is a sun with a diameter of 900 km, which provides light for a developed civilization.
The American John C. Symmes, who was a retired infantry officer, was one of the enthusiastic supporters of the theory and devoted his life to the subject. In 1818, he writes to all the public bodies in the USA: "I hereby declare that the earth is hollow and inhabited within, composed of a number of concentric solid spheres...". Siemens tried to raise money, in order to finance an expedition that would explore and discover the openings between the poles. He invited famous scientists to participate in an expedition that would leave Siberia on snow sleds, but they refused him. Only after his death, the USA sent an expedition to Antarctica (1838), which, although it did not find the longed-for opening to the belly of the earth, discovered that Antarctica is actually a continent.
Verne was aware of all these strange theories. For example, in his description of the light revealed to the heroes of "Journey to the Belly of the Earth", he writes: "The light resembled daylight, even though it was not possible to see any sun or moon. It was white light, white and cold light...". Immediately afterwards, in a section omitted from the Hebrew translation, the young Axel recalled the alternative scientific theory about the structure of the earth - "...I remembered the theory of the British captain (here Verne meant the American officer Sims - HI), who compared the earth to a huge hollow sphere, inside The air was illuminated by the tremendous pressure, while the two celestial bodies Pluto and Proserpina moved in their strange orbits. Is it possible that he was right?"
In this context, it is worth commenting that many of the Hebrew translations of Verne's books do them an injustice. These versions tended to omit many passages and details (mainly technical and scientific), which diminish the value of his work and turn it into a shallow adventure story for teenagers.

Extinct creatures
According to the scientific theory that prevailed in Verne's time, the temperature increases as one goes deeper, so that in the depths of the earth it is incredibly high and the material is found there in a molten state. In the book "The Voyages and Misadventures of Captain Tress", which Vern worked on at the same time as "Journey to the Belly of the Earth", he mentions the theory of Sir Humphrey Davy (Humphrey Davy) - a British chemist, who published a comprehensive study on volcanoes. According to Hella, it is possible that the Earth's interior is cold and contains many cavities and that the phenomenon of volcanism is only local and results from contact between metals, air and water. Although Dewey did not claim that the Earth was hollow, his theory supported the programming of a journey to the Earth's interior.
In 1846, a well-preserved mammoth was discovered in the Siberian ice. Immediately there were those who raised the possibility that it came from the space of the earth, through the opening at the pole, and that other creatures that have become extinct from the surface of the earth continue to exist there.
No wonder where, Shoren describes in his book an encounter with living mammoths - "...a huge creature moving among the trees! It was a big elephant, covered with hair. It was none other than the mammoth, the legendary elephant from the ice age..." In the second edition of the book (1867) he enlarges and adds to the mammoths a shepherd - a huge man, three and a half meters tall, whose hair is as long and wild as the hair of elephants. This, following the discovery of a human skeleton in the south of France, in 1853, whose age was estimated at about 100 thousand years.

in the future
It is amazing to discover that the theory of the hollow earth has never died out, despite the new studies on the structure of the earth and the vast scientific knowledge about its geophysical structure. Peculiar and strange people continued to hold it, but standard science treated it with disdain. For example, in 1998, Jan Lamprecht sought to challenge the accepted scientific models, claiming that it is possible that the Earth, the Moon, Venus and Mars are hollow.
Claims of this type sound quite strange today, but it must be remembered that the deepest drilling carried out by man reached a depth of only 10 km. Thus, most of the knowledge we have about the Earth's structure comes indirectly from analyzing the movement of seismic waves, which are created during an earthquake.
In 2001, the scientific journal 'Nature' published an article by David Stevenson (David Stevenson), an American physicist who read Jules Verne and offers the possibility of an unmanned journey to the center of the Earth. The idea sounds on the border of science fiction - Stevenson suggests pouring 100 million tons of iron into a narrow crack 300 meters deep. As a result of the enormous weight of the iron, the crack will begin to deepen downwards and seal from above due to the heat. A small research laboratory, which will float on the surface of the crack, will measure the temperature, pressure and composition of the material during its journey (which will last about a week), up to a depth of about 4,000 km. According to the proposal, the laboratory will transmit the results of the measurements through minor earthquakes, which will be picked up by particularly sensitive detectors on the surface of the earth.
In Stevenson's opinion, the implementation of the program will cost less than the US space project, and it will be able to provide answers to many questions regarding the structure of the Earth. Will someone pick up this gauntlet? It seems that the cold space is still more attractive than the hot, or maybe we should say - the cold, depths of the earth.

Jules Verne - not only for children

An evening honoring the hundredth anniversary of the writer's death will be held at Beit Yad-Livnim Rishon Lezion, on Thursday, 31/3/2005, at 20:00 p.m.
In the program:
Avihu Ben-Nun - on travels in the world
Dr. Hezi Yitzhak - science and romance, following the Green Fund
Dodo Ben Tzur - about a trip to Africa in a hot air balloon, accompanied by a screening of clips from the film
Reading excerpts from Verne's books
Courtesy article

The publishers of the journal travel through time. The article is taken from the magazine

Dr. Hezi Yitzhak, High School for Environmental Education, Midrash Sde Boker and the Desert Research Institute, Ben Gurion University