What Would Happen If the Earth Was Hollow and How Do We Know It’s Not?

Rhett Allain
7 min readJan 20, 2024
Image: Rhett Allain. My attempt to create a hollow Earth with python.

There was a fun question on reddit (but it was removed). The question asked about the physics of a hollow Earth. I mean, the question wasn’t completely clear and left off some important details — but I’m going to answer it anyway. In fact, I’m going to make up some different versions of this question and answer them.

Gravity and a solid…

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Rhett Allain

Physics faculty, science blogger of all things geek. Technical Consultant for CBS MacGyver and MythBusters. WIRED blogger.