Eli5: How do we know that the Hollow earth theory is false if we have never been in the center of the planet?
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We have a lot of data from which we can infer that the Earth isn’t hollow. For example, from observing the gravitational interactions between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun we know the mass of the planet. And Earth has a lot of mass which has to be somewhere. Another example: seismic waves from earthquakes go through the entire volume of Earth, and we can record and study those waves and figure out what’s inside it, the same way medics use ultrasound to see inside the human body without cutting it open. If there was a massive cavity inside Earth, you wouldn’t be able to miss it in the seismic record, but it’s just not there. Another example is the observation of temperature – we know how much heat we get from the Sun and how much heat the planet’s surface sheds into space, and there is an imbalance which can only be covered by the heat coming up from inside the planet. And for there to be that much heat the planet has to be not hollow.
All that is just off the top of my head, I’m sure there are more examples. In the end the hollow Earth theory can not explain most of our actual observations about the planet, and is thus not a valid theory.
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