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Show IS THE EARTH A VAST FURNACE? While engaged last May in watching the transit of Mercury, Professor Proctor and his assistant observed an intensely bright spot in the centre of the planet as it crossed the sun's disc. It is reported that, seen through their powerful refracting telescope, it appeared as a mere vivid point of light, central in the planet, like a hole pierced in the middle of a piece of round black card board. It was permanent from the time the planet's centre touched the one limb of the sun until it left the other limb - a period of seven hours. "If the observation was reliable," says a commentator, "it proves that the planet has a hollow axis. There are hypothesists like John Cleves Symmen, who have long held that the axis of the other planet spheres of our solar system, is similarly hollow with a clear tubular passage from the North to South Pole." If such is the fact, it is thought that should any of the balloonists of Cheyne's expedition reach the Pole they will be rather warmly received, the theory being that if the earth is a hollow cylinder, each of the Poles is the mouth of a vast furnace. In this way a German specialist accounts for the Aurora Borealis, attributing the mysterious "Northern Lights" to the glowing crater at the Pole. |