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Volume 2296

WHERE IS THE OPENING TO PELLUCIDAR?

By Rick Johnson
In 1930, Lord Greystoke (aka Tarzan) flew a rigid airship through the North Polar Opening into Pellucidar to rescue David Innes who had been taken prisoner by the Korsars.

The big question is and has always been, "Where is that Opening?" followed immediately by, "Can I go through too?" with other people asking "Are there other openings?"

Although the existence of said opening has been debated often, as is the existence of the Hollow Earth, far too many people have discovered this opening or evidence to the existence to put it off as 'just another flat-earth superstition'.

The evidence mounts almost monthly:  Eskimo legends of a warm paradise inhabited by spirits past the pack ice, animals migrating north into the Arctic instead of south, explorers finding healthy and well-fed animals hundreds of miles from any known food source, unexplained shadows on satellite photos, freshly frozen 'fossil beasts', descriptions of warm-climate vegetation and animals above the permafrost line, observations of the sun in the wrong direction or a 'mirage' of a second sun, Arctic waters and winds becoming warmer the further north you go, and even the journals of explorers such as Admiral Byrd who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for his historical flight where he described the Inner World.  All of these point towards the existence of something up there.

I am not so much concerned with the existence of Pellucidar as I am with the location of the Polar Opening.  Obviously the two are related and finding one will prove the other.  IF geologists are correct, the Earth is solid (more or less when you consider the fluid iron core that generates our magnetic field and the Van Allen Belts that protect us from Solar Radiation (discovered by Dr Van Allen, himself a flying saucer nut who wondered why all the UFOs enter and leave the Earth from the poles), then Pellucidar cannot exist.

BUT, if the Earth is hollow and there are Openings to the Inner World…..

The obvious solution to this problem is a sort of a ‘parallel universe’ where our Earth is solid but the ERB-Earth is hollow.  I recall my astronomy Professor at the University of Arizona, himself a respected author on the subject of cosmology, spending a few days teaching us the physics and gravity of a Hollow Earth so even today the idea is given some thought by the science community.

There are two theories to this problem:

The Hollow Earth Theory that states that the Earth is hollow and can be reached by permanent openings at either pole.  The Southern Pole is presumed to be buried under the mile thick ice sheet that compress the Antarctic Continent and so is unusable though this opening may melt at times to allow winds to exit the Inner world and assist in glacial formation.

This Theory once believed that the Openings to the Inner World were exactly at the Poles.  However, this belief has been successfully challenged by repeated and regular explorations and tourist trips to that location and the openings are now thought to be off-center as are the magnetic-poles.

The Parallel World Theory states that according to the famous Physicist Erwin Schrödinger (remember Schrödinger’s cat?), there are an infinite number of Earths all co-existing in the same place but (and I am paraphrasing his belief here) a few degree off-center so that they do not occupy the same space at the same time.  But, this theory states that occasionally, the separate universes ‘rub’ and an opening (a Schrödinger Wormhole) occurs that allows passage from one to the other.  If true, this explains a lot of what Charles Fort calls the 'Damned'.  It explains ghosts, dinosaurs in Africa, UFOs, telepathy, precognition … everything.

So, regardless of whether the Openings are physical holes that enter a Hollow World or a ‘wormhole’ that travels between the parallel Universes, it is clear that SOMETHING is up there.  Someplace there is a way from Earth to Pellucidar.  Somehow, people have crossed between and some have returned to tell the tale.

Again, it all comes down to one question?

Where?


DINOSAUR SURVIVALS

In an earlier paper, I postulated that isolated enclaves of  dinosaurs that survived into modern times simply cannot exist.  The amount of food required to feed even one sauropod is astronomical  (think of how much an elephant eats and multiply that by a dozen times) and when you multiply that amount of vegetation to feed a breeding population, it quickly become impossible for any large number of dinosaurs to survive in an area smaller than Ohio… or Great Britain.  Isla Sorna becomes totally out-of-the-question as the dinos would strip that entire island within  days.   Then when you add the predatory carnosaurs which must also have an adequate breeding population, you must then multiply the sauropod herd by ten to feed the carnosaur herds.  Even Sri Lanka, home to a herd of elephants, quickly becomes too small to handle these numbers.

Thus, it is obvious from a purely numbers point of view that dinosaurs simply cannot survive in an isolated area.   And though I will grant that dinosaurs may be long-lived, the idea of a single dinosaur surviving 65+ million years as in _The Shy Stegosaurs of Cricket Creek_ by Evelyn Sibley Lampman is ludicrous.  Hundreds of years, perhaps, thousands of years for certain trees, probable, but millions?  No.

Thus, we must postulate that the dinosaurs seen by people over the centuries were visitors and not a survival.   But from where?

My theory is that not only is the Earth hollow, but it is honeycombed with caverns and tunnels.  Many of these are isolated but many more connected.  In my earlier paper I described a story I was told while I lived at Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico (site of the infamous UFO crash).  The story is that a small auto described as a Volkswagen Beetle had fallen into Bottomless Lakes in northern New Mexico and years or decade later, had been discovered in Carlsbad Caverns in the south of the state.  This showed that the two were connected.  I also mentioned a local geologist who postulated that Colossal Cave in southern Arizona was believed to be connected to the Carlsbad system.  The Earth is not solid, but porous.

If so, then massive cavern systems stretching over hundreds or thousands of miles was not only possible, but seriously believed to be probable.

Could these systems reach Pellucidar?

Could some of these systems be large enough to allow the passage of a dinosaur?

Could some of the caves be so large that they could host entire dinosaur world micro-systems?

If so, then you don't need to theorize survivals of dinosaur colonies in a far-too-small area for a hundred million years in a geologically unstable area, you only need to allow for a dinosaur to travel a few hundred miles of caverns to a Terminus on the outer world.

Why not?  Whales migrate from pole to pole and so many birds. Monarch butterflies travel from South America to North America every year.  To a large dinosaur, the distance from Pellucidar to Earth is no different than a butterfly crossing the Caribbean Sea.
 


MIGRATION ROUTES

Here is how it works:

Some dinosaur enters a cave for refuge from storm or predator.  It eventually becomes lost and dies, BUT, not before it drops some  hundreds of pounds of dung (in the case of the herbivores, filled with undigested seeds).  The seeds sprout and adapt to the dark, creating the fantastic vegetations described by Verne, Burroughs, Carter and other journalists of the underground.

The dead dinosaur becomes a feeding ground for the indigenous parasites that feed  upon the carcass which also adapt to the dark.

Eventually another dino enters that tunnel/cave and finds vegetation from the first visitor.  This allows it to travel further until it dies, spreading its own fertile dung and corpse along the way.

Most of these tunnels end abruptly, leaving micro-ecologies in dead-end passages and caves but some end in a cavern large enough to allow for a full-size eco-system that allows for dinosaurs to exist.  None are large enough to support a complete breeding population of the variety described, but they don't have to be.  They are the Terminus of a migration route so as the dinosaurs die in the giant caverns, they are replaced by more that are moving from Pellucidar until a migration path is established.

Thus, the Zanthadon described by Lin Carter!   Not a separate and isolated super-cavern but a very large mega-cavern that is constantly being visited by prehistoric creatures from Pellucidar and occasionally from the surface world.

And some of these cavern/tunnel migrations will, eventually, reach the surface.

It may take thousands or even millions of years to establish a migration route that will support a herd of dinosaurs or even an individual with countless thousands dying along the way, but then, they have had a hundred million years of getting lost in dead-ends until the occasional path to the surface is found and established by accident.

No I will NOT show my math. This is not high schoolHow long is this path? It is 500 miles from Earth to Pellucidar as the Prospector bores.  But even a 20-30 degree incline means a straight path of only (remember your trigonometry that you swore that you'd never use after graduation?  A squared plus B squared equals C squared with A=500 miles. The angle of ac = 20 degrees and the B angle = 90 degrees).  I choose a 20 degree incline as easier to climb or descend.  Even a general calculation (I haven't done much trig in 30 years)  shows that the total travel is less than 1500 miles.  This is about Miami to Portland ( or Nova Scotia to Manitoba)  And if there are mega-caverns along with way with already established micro-climates, the migration may very well require generations of dinosaurs to travel from Pellucidar to Earth, or only a few months if it keeps on walking.
 


OPENINGS TO PELLUCIDAR

So, where are these openings to Pellucidar.

We know that there is one at the North Pole and a supposed opening at the south pole, but we will return to these later.  We also know that there are a number of other openings where dinosaurs exit Pellucidar.

So there are two types of Openings:  The large Polar Openings and the smaller Migration Terminus openings.  The former are 500 mile wide holes that penetrate the entire Earth's Crust, the latter being a simple large cavern/tunnel system that eventually reaches Pellucidar, passing through large caves filled with vegetation and dinosaurs and the occasional giant insect.

Where are the Migration Terminus?  How do we know where to look?

We look at Crypto zoology and the journals of various explorers.

A Cryptid is a creature that should not exist.  The coelacanth  discovered off the coast of Madagascar in 1938, the Mountain Gorilla of Africa, the Yeti of Tibet and the sauropod of the Congo are all cryptids.  The only difference is that the Coelacanth and the gorilla were eventually discovered by scientists, the rest, and many others, remain unknown to the hard-headed scientists who never seem to learn form the past.

If we look at the dinosaurid cryptids, we find them located in two main places: New Mexico and Africa.

Africa is easy, Pal-ul-Don!  This is the only case of a true dinosaur survival known and that consists of only a very large and inbred triceratops and a few aquatic reptiles possibly being the pliosaur or a dwarf aquatic sauropod.  All other animals from Pal-ul-Don are described by Greystoke as unusual varieties of modern mammals such as deer, lion, tiglion, etc.   Thus, if Pal-ul-Don is a Migration Terminus, the opening collapsed long ago.

The New Mexico cryptids are interesting as they generally show avian types such as the pteranodon or 'thunderbird'.   The chupacabra being an invasive species from the Caribbean and so outside this paper.  But where would a pterosaur come from?

The pre-Columbian Indians of New Mexico tell a legend of Turok and his brother who entered the caverns of southern New Mexico and exited in a valley or cave (the legends contradict each other ion thispoint) filled with giant saurians or 'honkers'.  In the late 19th century, a traveling carnival visited Mexico and for a brief time exhibited a tyrannosaur called 'Gwangi' from a valley entered via a cave.

Could these two stories be related?  Is the Lost Land  and the Valley of the Gwangi the same place?  If so, it would be either a mega-cavern with the illusion of sky or an isolated valley which is the terminus of a migration route.

After all, many sporting arenas that are roofed over are so large that they actually have weather!  So a mega-cavern with fog and moisture condensing would look like an overcast valley.

Also in the late 19th century, a British explorer, Maple White, discovered a high plateau in the mountains of northern Brazil which was inhabited by dinosaurs.  Specifically:  Iguanodon, Stegosaurus, Allosaurus/Megalosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Pterodactylus/Dimorphodon, Toxodon, Megaloceros, Glyptodon, Phorusrhacos.

The list is indicative of a Migration Terminus as the idea of a breeding population of such variety on an isolated plateau  17 by 30 miles is biologically impossible.  Plus when you consider the variety described, flightless birds and carnosaurs?  The Phorusrhacos and many other South American animals were exterminated by the big cats from North America as the Central American Land Bridge formed.  So Maple White land must be a Migration Terminus.


The Island of the Skull off Sumatra is another possibility.  First discovered by a Norwegian sailor who passed the map to the island to Carl Denham in 1923.  Mr. Denham visited the island and retrieved a large ape-like creature some 15-20 feet tall which he exhibited in New York.  Note, the Kong was NOT a gorilla but something between ape and man.

Denham describes the island as being inhabited by monstrous insect-like creatures and dinosaurs, including: a three-fingered Tyrannosaur, stegosaur, styracosaur, a semi-aquatic apatosaur and numerous pterosaurs.  Plus the last of the mega-Primates.  The interior of the island was covered with the ruins of a once-great civilization while the remaining humans were isolated on a single peninsula, driven into savagery with the economic effort to build and repair a wall that isolates them from the monsters of the interior.

Den Valdron had described the evolution  and migration of the mega-Primate from Indonesia and I will refer you to his excellent work for details.

One thing is clear, humans once existed as a great civilization on Skull Island and even lived in contact with the mega-primates.  Then they were driven out of their cities and the mega-primates were exterminated.  By what? And how?

Skull Island is volcanic and I propose that during one eruption some centuries ago, a lava tunnel opened a Migration Path from Pellucidar to Skull Island.  As the dinosaurs invaded, they killed of the mega-primates and drove the inhabitants to their sole beach where they impoverished themselves with constructing and maintaining the Wall.

Another place of supposed Dinosaur survival is Caspak.  First discovered by the Italian Navigator Caproni who followed Cook, he marked the island and sailed away without landing.  Later, in 1918, a German U-Boat carrying a combined German/British/American crew captained by Bowen Tyler discovered and entered the island to find it inhabited by dinosaurs.

Unfortunately, the biological evolution of the island makes it impossible to be naturally occurring on Earth and so has been theorized to be an experiment in evolutionary biology by the Reptilian aliens who visited Earth some 60 million years ago and have been abducting humanity ever since as slave labor.  Look to the skies!  It won't do any good but you may see their ships return to reclaim Earth and evict the primates who infest the place like roaches.

Regardless if this is true or not, it is probable that Caproni, or Caspak, is neither a Migration Terminus, nor a dinosaur survival and so may be excluded for this paper.

The same may be said for the Savage Land which is buried in the Antarctic.  Explored by the Plunder family and currently inhabited by their son Ka-Zar, Savage Land is claimed to be an experiment by another alien race, the Nuwali.  However, considering the vicinity of Savage land to the South Polar Opening, the Savage Land may actually be a mega-cavern on the Migration Route to the Surface.  The Nuwali would only have to establish climate-control to observe the Pellucidaran dinosaurs that entered the cavern.

The final dinosaur location is Isla Sorna, off the western coast of Costa Rica.  However this is neither a Migration Terminus nor a Survival but was created as a theme park by InGen which combined frog DNA with broken chains of fossilized Dinosaur DNA in an effort to create dinosaur-like creatures.

Thus, it is clear that there are but four known Migration Terminus locations that would connect the Surface with Pellucidar.  Lost Land aka Valley of the Gwangi in southern New Mexico or northern Mexico, Maple While land in northern Brazil, Island of the Skull aka Skull Island aka Kong Island in the Indian Ocean and Savage Land in the Antarctic.

Entering any of these would be worth the effort to locate and follow the Migration Route into Pellucidar.
 


OPENINGS

There are four known Openings to Pellucidar.  Two polar openings and two entry/exit craters.

Shortly before the 12th century, an Icelandic alchemist named Arne Saknussemm discovered a volcanic crater in Iceland that he claimed would take him to the center of the Earth.

"Descend, bold traveler, into the crater of Snæfellsjökull, which the shadow of Scartaris touches (lit: tastes) before the Kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; which I have done. Arne Saknussemm."
Centuries later, around 1865, Otto Lidenbrock  aka Professor Von Hardwigg discovered within  the writings of Snorri Sturluson, the key to Saknussemm's travels and entered the crater.   Months later they exited another crater in Stromboli Peak in southern Italy.

It was during these travels that  Lidenbrock described creatures that could only be from Pellucidar.  Although neither explorer actually made it to the inner World, it is clear that they found a Migration Route and possibly a Mega-Cavern.

Although the Stromboli Opening may be sealed by magma, the Icelandic Opening seems stable enough to be worth exploring.


POLAR OPENINGS

The Earth wobbles.  This wobbling causes all sorts of problems from weather to the moving of the Magnetic Poles (previously thought to be created by a molten iron core) to massive problems in navigation.


The original belief was that the Geographic North Pole, the Magnetic North Pole and the North Polar Opening were the same.  It is now known that the Magnetic pole is traveling (currently on Ellesmere Isl, Canada) north to bypass the Geographic Pole until it reaches Russia where it will turn and return to Canada.  If you chart this movement, you will see a rosette pattern similar to  that created by a Spirograph toy.

How do we know this? Pottery!  Bake clay pots that contain a bit of iron and the iron particles will align to the magnetic poles until the pot cools.  Find a few pots that are left in an abandoned kiln, see where the iron points and date the pots and, given enough finds, you know exactly where the magnetic poles were throughout history.

The magnetic pole moves south into Canada, then lops north to cross near the Geographic Pole to head for Russia, then loops back to Canada but to a different point where it loops again, back and forth like the rosette formed by a child's Spirograph.

It is this moving of the pole that confused the Spanish in the 17th century and caused a fleet of them to enter the North Polar opening that had been postulated by Abner Perry and David Innes.  In the mid 20th century, Von Harbin and Lord Greystoke flew the rigid airship, the 0-220, through the North Polar opening (surprise, Abner was correct for once!) to rescue David from the descendants of the Spanish Corsairs.

It was Admiral Byrd who made the Polar Opening famous.  He claimed to have seen it, to have entered it, to have observed the inhabitants and returned to tell the tale.  And of course, this very trip earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor and classified many of his notebooks as 'secret'.

Where exactly is this opening?

Extensive explorations of the ice-caps by submarine and satellite have shown that the Polar opening is NOT at the Geographic Pole. Because of the studies that show only ocean under the Geographic North Pole, it is believed that the polar openings are off-set.  One belief is that the opening is just north of Greenland, another that it is north of Russia.

We have a number of possibilities, all postulated by the Hollow Earth nuts.  OK, we know that the Earth is hollow because Pellucidar exists on the inside, but that does not validate the sanity of the Hollow Earth people.  So, predicted locations for the North Polar Opening are:  88N x 142E or 84.4N x 141E just off the New Siberia Islands (at that latitude, you can easily walk an entire degree of longitude), 84.4N x 41W just off Bear Isl, Greenland and 81N x 41E just off Franz Josef Island, Russia.

I give you a quote from an old explorers journal:

"It was from Franz Josef Land that Olaf Jansen and his father sailed northeast through a lead in the ice on July 1, 1829, and accidentally discovered the North Polar Opening into Our Hollow Earth."
The problem here is that we have three very well documented locations.  The Inuit of Canada and Admiral Bird insist that the Opening is north of Canada or Greenland.  Jansen insists that it is north of Russia.

A recent article on Canada dot com  (too long to type) entitled "Believers Seek Doorway into Earth's Interior Realm" dated 30 May 2007 describes a Canadian Businessman's attempt to create a tourist trade between the two worlds.

This article places the Opening at: 84.4 degrees North by 41 degrees East or roughly 400 km NW of Ellesmere Island.   A big problem here is that Ellesmere Isl runs from about 61 degrees WEST to about 92 degrees west.  41 degrees WEST is near Bear Island, Greenland and 41 degrees EAST (as stated in the article) is near Franz Josef Island, Russia.

Obviously there is a typo here.  But the question now becomes:  Could one be the major opening and the other two, minor Openings?
    Is the Opening near Ellesmere Isl and 41E is a typo for 61W?
       Or is the opening at 41W and the author of the article looked at a map and added the Ellesmere Isl to make the article relevant to Canadians but got his geography wrong?
       Or "Is the opening actually at 41E as in the article, near Franz Josef Isl and the writer got an attack of Dyslexia or typed in E as the two keys are next to each other?"

But when I located the 88 by 141 location on my sea floor map of the Arctic, I found something strange.  Note the small concentric circle.  This is about 50 miles across and centers on 88 by 141.  The middle circle is about 90 miles in diameter and indicates the true opening.  BUT the large circle is 500 miles across and indicates the beginning of the opening per David Innes and Abner Perry.


Note the really small circle with the 'X' at the 4 o'clock position within the large 500 mile circle.  THAT is the Geographic North Pole!  And as you can easily purchase a ticket to the Pole via ski-place or ice-breaker boat, regular trips go to that place so if there was a slope leading to the inner world, everyone would see it almost monthly.

BUT, if you follow my diagonal lines (marking 141-142 degrees) you will see a group of underwater mountains called the Lomonosov Range.  This is at 84 N by 141 E.

Curious.  It appears that the true location is at 84.4N by 141E, then someone dropped a '1' to give the location at 84.4N by 41E and then the Canadian article misread 41E to 41W and through a lack of cartographic ability, looked 20+ degrees west to place the opening in Canada.  Plus I would propose that Abner was mistaken as to the true size and exact location of the opening.  What a surprise, Abner Perry make a mistake?

I believe that the main opening to Pellucidar is a) at 84N by 141E and is much smaller than supposed (remember, Abner was guessing and had never been there).   Possibly the curvature starts at 100 miles and the full opening is maybe 50 miles across.

OR, Could there be three Openings at the pole?  And which one allowed the O-220 to pass?

For no good reason than my gut feelings, I propose that the New Siberian Opening at 141E is the primary Opening postulated by Abner Perry and used by the O-220.

Why?  First of all, the New Siberian Opening is at 84 North which is so close to the Geographic Pole that it would be easy to locate and really, the North Pole or a couple degrees south  of the North Pole?  Is there really enough of a difference to quibble?.  At 84 North, the search area becomes much more difficult and remains hidden longer.

Therefore, I believe that the major Opening is the New Siberian Opening at 84 degrees North by 141/142 degrees East.  With two much smaller openings off Franz Josef and Bear islands.  Earth is beginning to look a lot like Swiss Cheese.

There is also the Antarctic Opening postulated by Abner Perry.

There are two presumed locations for the Antarctic Opening.  #1 at 84S by 38W being the most popular for multiple reasons.  First, it balances the New Siberian Opening by being almost exactly opposite the North Polar Opening.  If these Openings formed as the Earth spun, then the Openings would naturally oppose each other.  Second, the Aurora Australis has been seen to appear and grow from this location.  And third, wind and mist and snow seems to originate from this location at times.

However, it is possible that as Antarctica is buried under two miles of ice, the Southern Opening may be sealed much of the year, opening only in the Summer and even then, requiring long days of warmth to allow the Pellucidaran warmth to melt away the ice sheet in that small area.

It is also possible that the Earth is thicker at the equator and thins to the poles because of centrifugal force as the Earth spun during formation.  Look at the atmosphere.  At the Equator, you can easily breath at five miles, at the level of the Himalayas, three miles and at the pole, less than two miles  causes oxygen starvation.  So perhaps the Earth's crust is a thousand miles thick at the equator, 500 miles thick at the level of New England and maybe 300 miles at the Poles.


VORTEX THEORY

Then there is the Den Valdron hypothesis.  He postulates that the Earth is more fluid than we would believe and often 'vortexes' will emerge to connect the two worlds.  There is a permanent one near the North Pole and multiple temporary openings scattered here and there that open, allow travel then close.  This would explain dinosaurs in Africa as a visitor that crossed through a smaller, temporary vortex between Pellucidar and the Congo.

I have no problem with this as it fits Schrödinger's 'wormhole' theory.   Valdron is simply describing a "Schrödinger Wormhole" as a vortex.

Consider, if you are in a valley with a Geologist.  You can explain patiently, “We are in a mega-cavern.  The clouds are mist and fog trapped by the ceiling, those mountains are actually columns formed by giant stalactites meeting giant stalagmites and those mountain ranges over there are the cavern walls.” And the Geologist will counter all that you have explained and see only what he wishes to see.

I would imagine that what Den Valdron sees as a 'vortex' is either a large cavern Migration Route or a Schrödinger Wormhole, misinterpreted as a fluid vortex simply because of lack of observational data.  After all, if you are that close to a Schrödinger Wormhole, you probably won't be around to describe it in any detail.  How may people are close enough to a tornado to study it AND stupid enough o stand in the open to perform said studies while the rest of us who wish to live, run for shelter?

And as the Valdron theory presupposes that the Inner Sun is a wormhole anchored by gravitational force to the geographic center of the Earth at one end and to Sol (our Sun) at the other, solar flares and sunspots would probably create ripples which establish Schrödinger Wormholes between Pellucidar and the Outer World with some irregularity, wormholes that resemble a vortex.

Until we can find and study one carefully, we can debate if it is an actual hole that penetrates 500 or more miles of Earth or is a warp in time that is imagined to be a hole.  People always thought there were hairy men in Africa until the Gorilla was discovered.  What was a gorilla was seen and interpreted as a hairy human.  One theory is that the Gorillas of the Valley of the Palace of Diamonds described in Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar are really Australopithecus Robustus and are simply being misdescribed as ‘gorillas’ by untrained observers more interested in survival than anatomical studies.  Plus the Schrödinger Wormhole fits my own theory of ‘stargates’ or ‘portals’ or even ‘gates’ between the worlds.  A Schrödinger Wormhole can easily explain John Carter’s travel to Barsoom and the Openings to Pellucidar.

If the Polar Openings are mostly stable Schrödinger Wormholes anchored at or near the Poles of both places, then they would open and close often enough to enable some explorers (Admiral Bird, the Viking Settlement of Greenland, the Spanish Corsairs, the O-220, etc.) to enter and exit, yet close at times when other people approach.  Thus the only people who would discover these Openings would be trapped in Pellucidar and so remain silent or return only to find that they are ridiculed as the Opening closes soon after and so following explorations would be unable to locate them.


CONCLUSION

So, where does that lead us today?

I postulate there are two major openings to Pellucidar, be they physical openings to an inner world or a Schrödinger Wormhole to an alternate universe.  One at the Antarctic is mostly buried under a mile of ice, the other near Novasibersk Islands at 84N by 141E.

I postulate that there is an extensive cave system that has multiple pathways to Pellucidar via our natural caverns.  Possibly into a physical inner world, possibly via the occasional Wormhole.  Possibly one near Bear Island, Greenland, another near Ellesmere, Island Canada, though these latter two may be simple mistyping of the coordinates for the Main Polar Opening or separate Polar Openings.  Travel up there is so miserable that anything is possible.

I postulate that there are multiple temporary Schrödinger Wormholes or Valdron Vortexes that open and close at random or predictable intervals.

All we have to do is locate these Migration Terminus or sit on the Polar Openings and wait for them to open (Weather or Sun-Spot controlled?).

And the easiest way to locate a Migration Terminus is to study the Crypto zoologists and locate every Dinosaur sighting on Earth.


ADDENDUM

The Schrödinger Wormhole has one major support aside from current geologic beliefs concerning the structure of the Earth.  If David Innes traveled straight down from New England to Sari and this trip of 500 miles took 3 days, then when he returned at an angle and found himself in the Sahara Desert (assuming Morocco)  some 3500 miles should take 7 days.  Yet the return trip took only 4 days if memory serves.

My calculator states that the Prospector digs through rock at an average speed of 166 mpd or 6.9 mph.  About!   I would imagine that it slowed as it passed granite and sped up at sand so I have averaged.

So, if a 500 mile trip took 3 days straight, then a four day return should be 666 miles along the hypotenuse of a right triangle with side A being the distance from New England to Sari, side B being the return distance and so side C must be.. 439 miles.. let's make it 440.  I'm not certain where David left the US but at the normal structure of the earth at the normal speed, he would have popped up some 300 miles east of New York City.

Unless going straight down the Prospector travels at 7 mph but at an angle it travels at 37 mph.  It is simply impossible to believe that it took such a short time to get back… unless he passed through a Schrödinger Wormhole that lies just beneath Sari.

ERBzine Refs
Rick Johnson Feature Articles and Fiction in ERBzine
Worlds of ERB
Barsoom
ERBzine 1645: Johnson: ERB Fan Profile
ERBzine 1522: Sociology of the Wieroo
ERBzine 2304: Prelude to Weir-Lu of Caspak
ERBzine 1527: Maltheusian Decimation in Pal-Ul-Don
ERBzine 2388: Bright-Eyed Flower of Pal-ul-don

ERBzine 1547: Opar
ERBzine 1710: Conflict!

ERBzine 1974: Anatomy of an Alien
ERBzine 2394: Dinosaur Survival On Earth

ERBzine 1965: Rescue In Pellucidar

ERBzine 2296: Where is the Opening to Pellucidar

ERBzine 1578: Barsoom Questions
ERBzine 1370: Mapping Barsoom I: Can It Be Done?
ERBzine 1562: Mapping Barsoom II: Compromises
ERBzine 1565: Mapping Barsoom III: The Past
ERBzine 1633: Valley Dor
ERBzine 1634: Swords On Mars
ERBzine 1711: A Panthan of Mars
ERBzine 1712: Spy: Arrival On Mars
ERBzine 2165: Battle at U-Gor
ERBzine 2166: Lost On Barsoom
ERBzine 2167: Meeting of the Panthans: Pt. I
ERBzine 2168: Meeting of the Panthans: Pt. II
ERBzine 2169: North to Barsoom
ERBzine 2196: Jahar
ERBzine 2303: Return to Barsoom I: Letters


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