The Terrestrial Reptoid Hypothesis
Posted by: Nick Redfern on February 15th, 2013
Tim Binnall – of Binnall of America – emailed me this morning with the data on his latest show, and here’s Tim himself to tell you all about it…
“John Rhodes, Terrestrial Reptoid Hypothesis:
“Getting back to our esoteric roots, BoA:Audio welcomes paranormal pioneer John Rhodes for a discussion on his groundbreaking work studying the Terrestrial Reptoid Hypothesis or, as it is more commonly known, ‘reptilians.’ Over the course of this mind-bending conversation, we’ll learn about how John first discovered stories of reptoids and ended up forming the TRH, the mainstream reputation and depiction of reptilians versus the information he has collected on the phenomenon, and how his reptoids theories fit into the overall paranormal landscape.
“Additionally, we’ll hear about underground bases, John’s MIB encounter, cattle mutilations, and government tinkering with UFO researchers. Plus, of course, tons and tons more.
“This is an absolute barnburner edition of the program where we explore one of the most controversial and remarkable theories in all of the paranormal world, the terrestrial reptoid hypothesis, with the man who has spent the last twenty years on the trail of the reptilians: John Rhodes.”
And here’s where you can find the episode.
About Nick Redfern
Punk music fan, Tennents Super and Carlsberg Special Brew beer fan, horror film fan, chocolate fan, like to wear black clothes, like to stay up late. Work as a writer.
What an absolute load of tosh! I can’t believe you’d even entertain the thought of giving column space for this kind of fringe claptrap. I’m sure I’m not the only one to think this.
Claptrap? Perhaps, but you’re forgetting that truth nearly always creeps in from the edges, as it were. If it weren’t for “fringe” ideas, we wouldn’t be where we are today.
Don’t be so quick to condemn! I’ve lived next door to reptilians before!!! Well, maybe….
I forgot to mention that, if you don’t believe in reptilian habitation, you’ve never checked out Al Gore!
I’m sure too that you aren’t the only one who can’t believe I would give column space to this. And yet, as if by magic, it does get column space!
Can’t say I’m much up on the “Reptoid Hypothesis”, but Nick…where was that awesome pic of you and the Gill-Man taken??!!
Well, I loved it. I’d like to see more of this stuff. I listened to the whole thing today. This stuff needs to be told, thank you for this Nick.
A question to Kelly if I may? Did you believe any of it?
I listened to the first 40-45 minutes and then I had to switch it off when he mentioned the “Hollow Earth” theory because I couldn’t listen to it anymore. The guy was clearly rambling and had no shred of credibility whatsoever in my eyes. Even the presenter seemed to switch off at times, I could sense that he didn’t believe a single word either. Does anyone else agree with me?
but a 7 foot ape man wandering the woods is real?
Darkhb:
The photo was taken about a month ago at the Austin, Texas-based “Museum of the Weird.” If you ever get chance, you should check it out. It’s a very cool place!
@ Jaded1, I blocked out the hollow earth theory with it’s own sun or moon down there. But the MIB’s and conspiracies, I always keep an open mind.
Probably shouldn’t mention this, but Admiral Richard E. Byrd was a Hollow Earth proponent. Said he was THERE.
Just sayin’.
“but a 7 foot ape man wandering the woods is real?”
YOU tell him he’s not; I’m not having anything to do with it.
Regarding the “Terrestrial Reptoid Hypothesis” — is it meant to be falsifiable? At least, perhaps, on some continuous scale, from “certainly true” to “probably true” to possibly true/possibly false” to “probably false” to “almost certainly false”? Or will the defense “you can’t prove a universal negative!” be invoked instead?
@Goodfoot
There are web pages that claim Admiral Byrd as a believer in their claims, but these are … questionable sources. Can you point to something a bit more tangible? Something like an unambiguous statement in support of the hollow earth theory in a book written by Admiral Byrd and published during his lifetime (so no, The Missing Diary of Admiral Richard E. Byrd, published 35 years after his death, does not count), or an interview in a major newpaper — something that would indicate this is not an urban legend about what he allegedly wrote in his unpublished diary?
There are many problems with the hollow earth idea. One is that it is an undergraduate exercise to show (using Gauss’s Theorem) that gravity would not hold people against the inner wall, where peaceful communes of technically and spiritually advanced hippies are said to live. Gravity does not work that way! Good night!
Fhqwhgads : The story of Admiral Byrd’s diary preceeds the Web by a long shot indeed. I doubt the story myself, so I cannot perform the miracle you request. I know the story has many, many problems, and I can’t overcome them. But, being from Byrd’s native state, Virginia, I can’t dismiss it a hundred percent. In Virginia one hears these tales, probably more often than in other places. The man is an icon here.
So, sorry, Lord of Gravity, I am unable to help either one of us, and only willing to help one.
@Goodfoot
Well, certainly the idea of a hollow earth goes back centuries, so there has long been a story looking for someone to attach itself to. Likewise, Admiral Byrd has been dead for about 56 years now, so it’s had plenty of time to spread, mutate, adapt, and implant itself in the culture. I strongly suspect it to be an urban legend.
Well, if you don’t like the gravity argument, you can use at least two more. One is that we can use seismic waves from earthquakes to probe depths all the way down to the core. This should be impossible if the earth is hollow. Another one deals specifically with the many entrances that are said to exist, for example at Mt. Shasta, at the Great Pyramid, and in Mammoth Cave, KY. Well, if you go any deeper in Mammoth Cave than the current level of the Green River, you’ll hit water. That’s how the cave was carved over time. Yes, the cave has been mapped for more than 350 miles, but those are 350 miles of branches and turns, not 350 miles in a straight line (as many people seem to think) and certainly not 350 miles down.
Fhqwhgads: As I said, I very much doubt the story – although it seems pretty certain the claims were actually made by Byrd. It’s too late for the story to ever get untangled.
I was just expressing my belief that your refutation was not as sound as you appear to think it is.
@Goodfoot
Well, we’ve been drifting off topic here, but no, my refutation is entirely sound. All it needs is the inverse square law for gravity, which certainly works on the scale of the earth. (Some people suspect that “dark matter” may be a problem with our understanding of gravity on the scale of thousands of light-years, but they are a minority.) If we didn’t understand gravity pretty well, we wouldn’t be able to dock with the ISS, for example, or send a probe to the asteroid Vesta. It’s even been tested down to distances of well less than a centimeter, in the vain hope of providing evidence of “large” hidden dimensions. So we can state with confidence that if the earth were hollow, with all its mass concentrated in a thin shell, the gravitational forces would cancel out and you would have weightlessness inside the shell. If there were an “interior sun” that (for some unknown reason) kept at the center the earth, it might pull things into it; it would not help keep Nazis and Atlantian hippies stuck to the shell. The centrifugal pseudoforce might, but it would be a tiny effect — much, much smaller than the moon’s surface gravity, which already was enough to interfere with normal walking. This is backed up by the fact that our apparent weight does not much vary with latitude.
Here are a few sites that describes the analogous situation for electric forces (because they are also inverse-square):
Electric Field of a Spherical Conducting Shell
More on Gauss’s Law
Gauss’s Law
A proof of Gauss’s Theorem (in the generic case) can be found on pages 7 and 8 of Fundamental Theorems of Vector Calculus
Looking back on the last link, I see it does not really prove Gauss’s Divergence Theorem. It only gives an example. A proof can be found instead here.
To be fair, this only rules out the hollow earth scenario. It says nothing about whether there are large (artificial?) caverns that may be large on a human scale but small on a planetary scale. To detect those, one would look for small variations in the surface gravity; the surface gravity would be stronger where dense, solid rock is underneath and weaker where porous rock or a cavity is underneath. Geologists working for petroleum companies use this method to look for rock that might contain oil or gas. This is how Glen Penfield found the Chicxulub crater.