File:Orville Livingston Leach - EARTH'S INTERIOR MAY BE HABITABLE (Providence News-Democrat, 12 Aug. 1907, p. 3).jpg

Summary

• "EARTH'S INTERIOR MAY BE HABITABLE", News-Democrat (Providence, RI): 3, 12 Aug. 1907, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91070633/1907-08-12/ed-1/seq-3/ 
  

  Orville L. Leach, the Auburn scientist whose researches along the line of radio-activity have been attended by Interesting results, comes forth with a claim that the interior of the earth, instead of being in a state of liquefaction is inhabitable. He finds that when a red hot iron wire in inserted into a jar of pure oxygen gas that the wire burns and shining black hollow globules of oxide of iron fall to the bottom of the jar.

  Mr. Leach says: “It will be seen that when a portion of the oxygen gas is taken into the iron that there is a partial vacuum inside the jar and consequently a reduced atmospheric pressure. This fact shows why the hollow globules form.

  “Our earth is of course rolling along in a vacuum — in the ether of the universe, and it is deduced that our earth must be a hollow sphere, as the same laws pertain to the microcosms, or minute parts of the universe, as to the microcosms of worlds.

  “The ideals of prophets, bi[o]logists and optimists has always been above the existing climatic conditions of the exterior of this mundane sphere, where day and night alternate, where gales and cyclones play hav[o]c, where changes of temperature constantly endanger the health and a thousand and one discordant states of existence surround us. It is claimed that all of these incongruities are eliminated from the new land lining the interior of the crust of our earth.”

  Gravity, he says, is the result of the radio activity of the crust of the earth, the radiating lines of force are refracted or curled and in passing through the matter of the earth draw the matter toward any surface from which the rays emanate, the same as a corkscrew will draw a cork toward the operator.

  Mr. Leach suggests that theologists compare the descriptions of “The Golden City” of the book of Revelations to the conditions, size, etc., possible in a land on the inner crust of the earth. That light from electrical conditions on the interior surface exists seems, he says, to be verified by the “Northern Lights,” which, it would seem, are a reflection from the interior of the earth.

  The earth, he says, will not finally lose all its heat and become a dead planet, as a vacuum cannot conduct heat and consequently the earth will always retain heat. He also says that heat can be made at any time from magnetism, and he propounds the query that if the sun supplies direct heat to the earth why it it that the nearer we get to it the colder it grows?

  “The historical data which is adduced to this new claim of an inhabitable land of joy on the interior of our earth's crust is this,” continued Mr. Leach. “Antar[c]tic explorers have found butterflies near the south pole, winds which blow from the south in the Antar[c]tic regions are always warm, it is claimed that magnetic currents flow in at the north pole and out at the south pole, the discovery of the open polar sea by Dr. Kane near the north pole is another fact which seems to prove that there is an opening at the north pole into a region of warmth. The only one who has ever claimed to doubt Dr. Kane's report was a man named Godfrey, who was a disgruntled sailor of the doctor's crew. It remains an undisputed fact that the doctor told the truth and that an open polar sea did exist at the time when he visited the Arctic regions.”

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