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Hollow Moon
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Hollow Moon
The Hollow Moon and the closely related Spaceship Moon are pseudoscientific hypotheses that propose that Earth's Moon is either wholly hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. No scientific evidence exists to support the idea; seismic observations and other data collected since spacecraft began to orbit or land on the Moon indicate that it has a solid, differentiated interior, with a thin crust, extensive mantle, and a dense core which is significantly smaller (in relative terms) than Earth's.
While Hollow Moon hypotheses usually propose the hollow space as the result of natural processes, the related Spaceship Moon hypothesis holds that the Moon is an artifact created by an alien civilization; this belief usually coincides with beliefs in UFOs or ancient astronauts. This idea dates from 1970, when two Soviet authors published a short piece in the popular press speculating that the Moon might be "the creation of alien intelligence"; since then, it has occasionally been endorsed by conspiracy theorists like Jim Marrs and David Icke.
An at least partially hollow Moon has made many appearances in science fiction, the earliest being H. G. Wells' 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon, which borrowed from earlier works set in a Hollow Earth, such as Ludvig Holberg's 1741 novel Niels Klim's Underground Travels.
Both the Hollow Moon and Hollow Earth theories are now universally considered to be fringe or conspiracy theories.
The fact that the Moon is less dense than the Earth is advanced by conspiracy theorists as support for claims of a hollow Moon. The Moon's mean density is 3.3 g/cm3, whereas the Earth's is 5.5 g/cm3. Mainstream science argues this difference is due to the fact that the Earth's upper mantle and crust are less dense than its heavy, iron core.
Between 1969 and 1977, seismometers installed on the Moon by the Apollo missions recorded moonquakes. The Moon was described as "ringing like a bell" during some of those quakes, specifically the shallow ones. This phrase was brought to popular attention in March 1970 in an article in Popular Science.
On November 20, 1969, Apollo 12 deliberately crashed the Ascent Stage of its Lunar Module onto the Moon's surface; NASA reported that the Moon rang 'like a bell' for almost an hour, leading to arguments that it must be hollow like a bell. Lunar seismology experiments since then have shown that the lunar body has shallow moonquakes that act differently from quakes on Earth, due to differences in texture, type and density of the planetary strata, but there is no evidence of any large empty space inside the body.
In 1970, Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, advanced a hypothesis that the Moon is a spaceship created by unknown beings. The article was entitled "Is the Moon the Creation of Alien Intelligence?" and was published in Sputnik, the Soviet equivalent of Reader's Digest. The Vasin-Shcerbakov hypothesis was reported in the West that same year.
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Hollow Moon AI simulator
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Hollow Moon
The Hollow Moon and the closely related Spaceship Moon are pseudoscientific hypotheses that propose that Earth's Moon is either wholly hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. No scientific evidence exists to support the idea; seismic observations and other data collected since spacecraft began to orbit or land on the Moon indicate that it has a solid, differentiated interior, with a thin crust, extensive mantle, and a dense core which is significantly smaller (in relative terms) than Earth's.
While Hollow Moon hypotheses usually propose the hollow space as the result of natural processes, the related Spaceship Moon hypothesis holds that the Moon is an artifact created by an alien civilization; this belief usually coincides with beliefs in UFOs or ancient astronauts. This idea dates from 1970, when two Soviet authors published a short piece in the popular press speculating that the Moon might be "the creation of alien intelligence"; since then, it has occasionally been endorsed by conspiracy theorists like Jim Marrs and David Icke.
An at least partially hollow Moon has made many appearances in science fiction, the earliest being H. G. Wells' 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon, which borrowed from earlier works set in a Hollow Earth, such as Ludvig Holberg's 1741 novel Niels Klim's Underground Travels.
Both the Hollow Moon and Hollow Earth theories are now universally considered to be fringe or conspiracy theories.
The fact that the Moon is less dense than the Earth is advanced by conspiracy theorists as support for claims of a hollow Moon. The Moon's mean density is 3.3 g/cm3, whereas the Earth's is 5.5 g/cm3. Mainstream science argues this difference is due to the fact that the Earth's upper mantle and crust are less dense than its heavy, iron core.
Between 1969 and 1977, seismometers installed on the Moon by the Apollo missions recorded moonquakes. The Moon was described as "ringing like a bell" during some of those quakes, specifically the shallow ones. This phrase was brought to popular attention in March 1970 in an article in Popular Science.
On November 20, 1969, Apollo 12 deliberately crashed the Ascent Stage of its Lunar Module onto the Moon's surface; NASA reported that the Moon rang 'like a bell' for almost an hour, leading to arguments that it must be hollow like a bell. Lunar seismology experiments since then have shown that the lunar body has shallow moonquakes that act differently from quakes on Earth, due to differences in texture, type and density of the planetary strata, but there is no evidence of any large empty space inside the body.
In 1970, Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, advanced a hypothesis that the Moon is a spaceship created by unknown beings. The article was entitled "Is the Moon the Creation of Alien Intelligence?" and was published in Sputnik, the Soviet equivalent of Reader's Digest. The Vasin-Shcerbakov hypothesis was reported in the West that same year.