World ice theory
The world ice theory (also Glacial cosmogony or WEL for short ) is a thesis published in 1913 by the Austrian engineer Hanns Hörbiger (1860–1931), according to which most bodies of the universe are made of ice or metal. In the solar system , the earth is the only celestial body for which this does not apply; The moon , too , is largely made of ice. The world ice theory contradicts fundamental astronomical and physical knowledge , also known for a long time in Hörbiger's time, and is today generally rejected as demonstrably false.
The world ice theory is based on the assumption that the creation of the universe can be traced back to "mutations" of eternal ice . According to Hörbiger, the universe is in a constant dualism of sun and ice planets, which leads to an eternal cycle of catastrophes and new creations. Although a pseudoscience , the teaching gained numerous followers in the first half of the 20th century.
The thesis
According to Hörbiger, a gigantic star with a million times the mass of our sun existed in the constellation Dove millions of years ago . A huge planet had penetrated this sun, which consisted mostly of water ice and a metal core. Upon penetration, the planet was covered with a crust of slag so that it did not evaporate immediately. The planet has lingered inside the sun for a long time, with its interior heating up and superheated water vapor being generated. As a result of an external disturbance, the planet finally shattered in a huge explosion due to the internal overpressure. Its components were pushed into space from the sun in a funnel shape. The lightest fragments were thrown farthest into the room and formed a “glowing milky way”. From the remaining components and freezing water vapor, our solar system and an “ice-milk road” emerged three times as far from the planet Neptune .
Ice particles and clouds of hydrogen gas in the solar system, which Hörbiger calls ether , would inhibit the movement of the planets and moons so that their movement would be slowed down. This would cause smaller planets to be captured by the larger ones, and even to become moons that eventually crash onto the planets. The planets, in turn, would approach the sun and evaporate. The original number of planets in our solar system is said to have been more than 30. The Saturn ring is said to represent the remnant of an “intra-Uranus”.
The outer planets ( Mars , Jupiter , Saturn , Uranus and Neptune ), which Hörbiger calls "Neptodes", are supposed to be pure water balls enclosed by ice. The inner planets ( Mercury and Venus ), called "Heliodes", on the other hand, should consist mainly of metal and be surrounded by a fine layer of ice. This “fine ice” arises when interplanetary ice chunks (which were formed during the “original explosion”) crash into the sun. The impact leads to the formation of sunspots, with the resulting steam being expelled and freezing in space. This fine ice should be visible on earth in the form of cirrus clouds. Earthly hail occurs when a chunk of ice penetrates the earth's atmosphere as a meteor.
Because of its distance from the sun, the earth occupies a central position. It is neither covered by fine ice like the Heliodes nor by kilometers of ice like the moon or Mars.
The moon, which used to be an independent planet, is covered by ice because it lacks a protective atmosphere. The moon gets closer and closer to the earth until it breaks under its own weight. The fragments would fall to earth and cause a global climate catastrophe. Such disasters would have occurred several times in the past and shaped older cultures of mankind. When the previous moon dissolved (it is said to have been the sixth moon on earth) its ice and water masses are said to have triggered the biblical flood . When our current moon was captured only 12,000 years ago, floods are also said to have occurred, whereby the great empire of Atlantis is said to have perished. The Nordic mythology with its idea of a "twilight of the gods" and the Apocalypse of John are said to have their origin in such catastrophe scenarios.
The origin and dissemination of the world ice theory
Hörbiger reports that the idea of an ice world came to him intuitively , and indeed "like a lightning bolt", while looking at the moon with a telescope for hours . He suddenly realized that the features of its surface and its radiant brightness could only be explained by the fact that it was made entirely of ice. This was his first "inspiration", from which he expected "immortal" fame. A few nights later he had his second inspiration. In a dream he saw himself in space and looked at a silver pendulum swinging back and forth that grew larger and larger until it finally broke. He had thus gained the knowledge that Newton was wrong and that the gravity of the sun is no longer effective at three times Neptune's distance.
From these inspirations he developed his ice world theory. The entire creation is therefore characterized by an everlasting struggle between the opposing elements fire and ice, a struggle between Neptunism and Plutonism . The solar system was said to have arisen from the cosmic union of a glowing “sun mother” with an “ice giant”.
His 800-page main work Glacial-Cosmogony , published in 1912, was chaotically structured and incomprehensible. In cooperation with the teacher and amateur astronomer Philipp Fauth (the two of whom exchanged mostly by letter), a revision with the title “Hörbiger's Glacial Cosmogony” was created, which was published in 1913 . Fauth re-summarized the original text. The teaching is spread over almost 800 closely described pages, although the work is difficult to read due to its lengthy explanations and inadequate structure. Hörbiger claimed from the beginning that his teaching was infallibly true: "What agrees with it is right, what cannot be combined with it is wrong."
When it was published shortly before the First World War , the world ice theory initially received little attention. Only after the war, through further publication by other authors such as Max Valier , newspaper reports and not least through science fiction novels, a larger following was found, and a real mass movement formed. Books, pamphlets , magazines, posters were published, a “Society for World Ice Studies”, a “Association for Cosmotechnical Research e. V. ”and the“ Hörbiger Institute ”in Vienna were founded. Intellectuals such as Gottfried Benn and Max Bense also succumbed to the fascination of the mission-conscious teaching. Supporters even stormed astronomical lectures, demanded the discontinuation of classical astronomy and chanted “We want Hörbiger!”. Some industrialists and businesspeople have required job seekers to sign a "I swear I accept the world ice theory" statement before hiring.
The world ice theory was quickly rejected by the scientific community, especially by astronomers , because it did not stand up to any scientific consideration. As early as 1925, Robert Henseling published a volume in which five authors refuted the teaching systematically and in a generally understandable manner. Due to the obvious weaknesses of the teaching, attempts have been made again and again to reform it. Hörbiger, who was considered to be extraordinarily stubborn, however, opposed such a watering down of his "pure teaching". He saw himself as the only German genius who had to fight against ignorant university professors. He dismissed photographs showing that the Milky Way is made up of billions of stars as falsifications by reactionary astronomers. To the objection that his view of the world contradicted the calculations of celestial mechanics, he replied that "calculations only lead the right way". Temperature measurements of the moon, which showed that its surface temperatures reached well over 100 ° C during the day, did not challenge him. He wrote to a critic: "Either you learn to believe in me or I have to treat you as an enemy."
The world ice theory in the Third Reich
In the Third Reich the theory experienced a considerable political revaluation. Leading National Socialists , including Heinrich Himmler , were supporters of the world ice theory. Even Adolf Hitler was impressed by her. From 1937, the Welteislehre therefore gained in branch meteorology of the SS Ahnenerbe influence. In particular, an alleged effect of the eternal world ice on Germanism was to be demonstrated. When the war broke out, the world ice theory no longer played a role in the meteorological research of the ancestral inheritance, as it was of no use, and its representative Hans Robert Scultetus worked as a meteorologist for the Air Force.
The world ice theory from a scientific point of view
After the Second World War , world ice theory largely disappeared from public awareness. However, today there are a number of esoteric websites on which the world ice theory is defended. Her supporters claim that new discoveries in space exploration, such as the discovery of the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, confirm Hörbiger's theory.
Water is a relatively common compound in the solar system. In the outer solar system is water because of the low temperatures only in the solid aggregate state , d. H. in the form of ice. The moons of the outer planets are actually surrounded by a more or less thick layer of water ice. In contrast, there are no indications for Hörbiger's thesis that planets are formed by the penetration of an ice planet into a massive primeval sun.
First of all, his basic assumption or "inspiration" that the lunar surface consists entirely of water ice is to be regarded as completely wrong according to the current state of science. According to spectroscopic studies and the results of the Apollo missions, the surface of the moon consists of silicate rock.
"Primordial suns" with the mass specified by Hörbiger (originally he assumed a million times the solar mass, later only a "many hundred times") are physically not possible. Such massive stars would be unstable due to the immense radiation pressure and would blow away the outer areas. The common picture of cosmology assumes that the formation of the solar system is based on the fact that a cloud of gas and dust contracted as a result of gravitational effects. The sun formed in the center, the planets in a surrounding accretion disk .
Cirrus clouds and hail are meteorological phenomena in the earth's atmosphere and not the result of "fine ice blowouts" from the sun and the impact of cosmic chunks of ice. An "ice meteorite" would either evaporate when it entered the earth's atmosphere due to air friction or - if it were massive enough - hit the earth's surface as an ice bomb. Under no circumstances would it come down in the form of homogeneous ice particles.
Sunspots are the visible effects of strong magnetic field lines from the sun. This can be proven by means of spectroscopic examinations ( Zeeman effect ). A chunk of ice that cools an area the size of a sunspot (often several diameters of the earth) from 6,000 ° C (mean temperature of the photosphere ) to around 4,000 ° C (mean temperature of sunspots) by melting and evaporation would have to be gigantic and already in Telescope be visible. Especially when it approaches the sun on a spiral path as a result of ether inhibition, as postulated by Hörbiger.
The idea of an inhibiting ether has proven to be wrong. The elementary particles or particles present in the solar system have no significant influence on the orbit of the planets and moons. Measurements also show that our moon is not approaching the earth, but is steadily moving away from it. The earth's rotation is slowed down by tidal forces . Since the total energy and above all the angular momentum of the system are retained, the distance between earth and moon increases.
The Milky Way is not an ice ring at three times Neptune's distance, but consists of billions of fixed stars at a much greater distance. During Hörbiger's lifetime, parts of the Milky Way could not be resolved into single stars using a telescope .
However, according to Boschke, with reference to the world ice theory: "If the building of the fantastic conjectures is only spacious enough, there must be something somewhere that later turns out to be correct", and accordingly Hörbiger was not quite right with regard to the composition of the comets not correct; Science today also assumes that the rings of Saturn consist of a mixture of ice and minerals, and in 1997 Frank Louis of the University of Iowa said, through the analysis of satellite photos, that he found that chunks of ice the size of a house penetrate the earth's atmosphere every day.
Individual evidence
- ↑ His two sons, Attila and Paul Hörbiger , founded the actor dynasty of the Hörbigers; see. Friedrich Ludwig Boschke: The unexplored. The unknown world we live in . Munich 1977, p. 264.
- ↑ Fantastische Tiefkühlkost , article on time online from the print edition No. 34/2015 of August 20, 2015, accessed on March 8, 2020.
- ↑ a b Atlantisforschung.de: A theoretical and historical consideration of Hörbiger's glacial cosmology (Author: Bernhard Beier. Article created August 15, 2009 (Bb). Last edited May 3, 2019 (BB (sic!)). Accessed June 6, 2020 .
- ^ Henry Picker: Hitler's table talks in the Führer Headquarters 1941/1942 . Stuttgart 1963. p. 166 f.
- ↑ Michael Kater, Das "Ahnenerbe" der SS 1935-1945, Oldenbourg 2006, p. 222 f.
- ↑ FL Boschke: The unexplored. The unknown world we live in. Munich 1977, p. 264 f.
- ↑ report on it z. B. in: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung: Huge lumps of ice shoot towards the earth ; Issue of May 30, 1997 (No. 124); P. 10.
Historical writings
- Hanns Hörbiger and Phillip Fauth, Glacial Cosmogony , 1913, online - Internet Archive
- Phillip Fauth, Hörbiger's Glacial Cosmogony , 1913, Hermann Kaysers Verlag, Kaiserslautern, 772 pages, 212 illustrations; New edition Leipzig 1925
- Hanns Fischer, Die Wunder des Weltteis , 1922, Hermann Paetel Verlag, Berlin-Wilmersdorf
- Hanns Fischer, Der Mars - an unrestricted ice ocean , 1924, R. Voigtländers Verlag, Leipzig
- Hanns Fischer, Riddle of the Deep , R. Voigtländers Verlag, Leipzig
- Hanns Fischer, Weltwender , R. Voigtländers Verlag, Leipzig
- Robert Henseling Controversial Weltbild , 1939, Franckh'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Kosmos, Stuttgart (critical examination of the WEL)
- Hinzpeter, Georg, primal knowledge of the cosmos and earth . The foundations of mythology in the light of the wisdom of ice cream; Leipzig 1928
- Edmund Kiß, The Sun Gate of Tiahuanaku and Hörbiger's World Ice Theory , Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 1937
- Max Valier, Der Sterne Bahn und Wesen , R. Voigtländers Verlag, Leipzig
- Heinrich Voigt , Die Welteislehre and I , R. Voigtländers Verlag, Leipzig
literature
- Joachim Herrmann : The wrong worldview. Astronomy and superstition. A critical investigation into astrology, world ice theory, hollow world theory, habitability of the sun, flying saucers and other astronomical heresies. Franckhsche Verlagshandlung Kosmos, Stuttgart 1962 ( Die Orion-Bücher ), (Unabridged, revised edition: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-423-00958-6 ( dtv 958)).
- Brigitte Nagel: The world ice theory. Their history and their role in the “Third Reich”. Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-928186-01-9 (2nd edition = unchanged reprint: Diepholz - Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-928186-55-8 ).
- Christina Wessely: Career of a Weltanschauung: Die Welteislehre 1894–1945. In: Contemporary History. 33, 2006, ISSN 0256-5250 , pp. 25-39.
- Christina Wessely: World Ice. The "astronomy of the invisible" around 1900. In: Dirk Rupnow et al. (Ed.): Pseudo-science. Conceptions of non-scientific nature in the history of science. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 163-193, ISBN 978-3-518-29497-0 , ( Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 1897).
- Christina Wessely: Welteis: A true story. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-88221-989-0 .
- Stefan Tuczek and Torsten Ehlers: "Destroying what is worthless, eradicating the superstitions of science, technology and false religions." The world ice theory as phantasm . In: Quarber Mercury . Franz Rottensteiner's literary magazine for science fiction and fantasy , vol. 115, pp. 85–98, 2014. ISBN 978-3-934273-94-8 .
