Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas about Our Planet
    Unavailable
    Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas about Our Planet
    Unavailable
    Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas about Our Planet
    Ebook314 pages6 hours

    Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas about Our Planet

    By Donald R. Prothero and Michael Shermer

    2/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    Aliens. Ley lines. Water dowsing. Conspiracies and myths captivate imaginations and promise mystery and magic. Whether it's arguing about the moon landing hoax or a Frisbee-like Earth drifting through space, when held up to science and critical thinking, these ideas fall flat.
    In Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas About Our Planet, Donald R. Prothero demystifies these conspiracies and offers answers to some of humanity's most outlandish questions. Applying his extensive scientific knowledge, Prothero corrects misinformation that con artists and quacks use to hoodwink others about geology—hollow earth, expanding earth, and bizarre earthquakes—and mystical and paranormal happenings—healing crystals, alien landings, and the gates of hell. By deconstructing wild claims such as prophesies of imminent natural disasters, Prothero provides a way for everyone to recognize dubious assertions. Prothero answers these claims with facts, offering historical and scientific context in a light-hearted manner that is accessible to everyone, no matter their background.
    With a careful layering of evidence in geology, archaeology, and biblical and historical records, Prothero's Weird Earth examines each conspiracy and myth and leaves no question unanswered.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndiana University Press
    Release dateJul 14, 2020
    ISBN9781684351367
    Author

    Donald R. Prothero

    Donald R. Prothero specializes in physics, planetary sciences, astronomy, earth sciences, and vertebrate paleontology. He has taught for more than thirty years at the college level, including at Columbia, Knox, Pierce, Vassar, and the California Institute of Technology. He has authored or edited more than three hundred scientific papers and thirty books, including Giants of the Lost World: Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Monsters of South America.

    Read more from Donald R. Prothero

    Related to Weird Earth

    Related ebooks

    Science & Mathematics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      ‘The Contact Paradox’ Sums Up The Search For Extraterrestrials

      Feb 12, 2020

      Keith Cooper traces the history of humanity’s irrepressible urge to search for extraterrestrial intelligence – and the trouble it could get us into.

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Moon Is Full of Money

      Sep 7, 2017

      I was slung in my favorite deck chair, drink in hand, having a gawk at the night sky. Andromeda, Pisces ... I trawled the constellations, mind abandoned, still aware in some curve at the back of my brain that the world is coming apart at the seams an

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Moon Is Full of Money

      Jul 18, 2019

      I was slung in my favorite deck chair, drink in hand, having a gawk at the night sky. Andromeda, Pisces ... I trawled the constellations, mind abandoned, still aware in some curve at the back of my brain that the world is coming apart at the seams an

      14 min read

    • Article

      Lives Of The Great Occultists

      Sep 10, 2020

      Personally, I blame that Aleister Crowley. If my memory serves me well (which, these days, it seldom does), Hunt Emerson and I more or less drifted into creating ‘Lives of the Great Occultists’ after I told him a couple of my favourite yarns about th

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Science Of Dune

      Oct 6, 2021

      The Science Of Dune
      17 min read

    • Article

      Why We’re Drawn Into Darkness

      Oct 10, 2019

      Robert Macfarlane grew up obsessed twith climbing mountains and nearly died on several occasions as he scaled some of the world’s high peaks. He found a safer way to indulge his alpine passions, writing about the mystique of mountains. As someone dra

      6 min read

    • Article

      Objects of Fear and Worship: The Evolution of Aliens in Literature

      Oct 20, 2017

      The sorns are slender and humanoid and are the scientists and thinkers; the hrossa resemble overstretched otters; they are poets and musicians; and the pfifltriggi are the builders, looking like insectile frogs. The post Objects of Fear and Worship:

      6 min read

    • Article

      Good Vibrations

      Mar 4, 2024

      Good Vibrations
      6 min read

    • Article

      Television

      Jan 5, 2023

      Graham Hancock has been one of the fixtures of the “alternative archæology” scene for around 30 years. Following his breakout work, The Sign and The Seal, featuring his theories about the Ark of the Covenant, Hancock has been developing his own hypot

      2 min read

    • Article

      Science

      Nov 2, 2023

      Science
      4 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 10, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Wisdom Of The Ancients

      Oct 15, 2020

      Wisdom Of The Ancients
      5 min read

    • Article

      New Search For Alien Life

      Sep 9, 2021

      New Search For Alien Life
      11 min read

    • Article

      A Muddy Refuge

      Oct 8, 2020

      Lost and Found on the River Thames Lara Maiklem Bloomsbury 2020 Pb, 317pp, £9.99, ISBN 9781408889237 As children, nearly all of us have an instinct for curiosity and collecting. I still have a stone with a hole in it I found on Chesil beach as a thre

      9 min read

    • Article

      Why We Hunt For Alien Life

      Nov 1, 2023

      Why We Hunt For Alien Life
      4 min read

    • Article

      Our Attitude Toward Aliens Proves We Still Think We’re Special

      Aug 2, 2018

      “How many kingdoms know us not!”—Blaise Pascal, Thoughts (1670) One summer’s day in 1950, the great Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi was having lunch with the physicists Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, and Herbert York at Los Alamos when the c

      7 min read

    • Article

      Not Merely the Finest TV Documentary Series Ever Made: A reflection on Jacob Bronowski’s “The Ascent of Man.”

      Nov 28, 2013

      A range of dark hilltops appears against a dawn sky. On a ridge in the far distance we can discern a human silhouette. It is someone telling us about the uniqueness of Man. “Man …” says the tiny figure in the landscape, “is not a figure in the landsc

      10 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jul 16, 2020

      Allen Lane £20 • HB Cosmology has allowed us to piece together the history of our Universe and explain how we got to where we are today. But have you ever wondered how it will end? The End of Everything explores five possible scenarios for its ultima

      4 min read

    • Article

      News Of The Week

      Nov 10, 2023

      UP UNTIL recently, the moon was thought to be 4,42 billion years old, but new research suggests it’s 40 million years older – making it 4,46 billion years old. Scientists came to this conclusion after studying pieces of moon rock taken during the las

      5 min read

    • Article

      Think Different

      Jul 5, 2022

      Think Different
      7 min read

    • Article

      Monsters, Marvels, and the Birth of Science: How the Unlikely and Unexplainable, Strange and Terrifying, Spawned the Age of Science.: How the unlikely and unexplainable, strange and terrifying, spawned the age of science.

      Aug 1, 2013

      Finding regularity in nature is the bread and butter of science. We know that reptiles lay eggs, while mammals bear live young; the Earth revolves around the sun every 365.25 days; electrons glom onto protons like bears onto honey. But what if some o

      11 min read

    • Article

      Harnessing Ancient Sensitivity

      Dec 1, 2022

      Adventures in 40,000 Years of Consciousness Charles Foster Profile Books 2022 Pb, 400pp, £10.99, ISBN 9781788167185 Charles Foster’s first best-seller – Being a Beast (2016), widely praised as a “strange masterpiece” – had a premise that was hard to

      11 min read

    Reviews for Weird Earth

    2/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      This book does have some interesting trivia concerning the First Ladies of the United States of America's Presidents. But, there seemed to be a twist on it against the current FLOTUS, Melania Trump. I didn't care for that. Can we not have good clean journalism? I didn't think so. I didn't even get through the entire book, only made it to page 59. I consume books, continuously, but not this one.There are several pages of black and white photos of the current and past FLOTUS.Don't waste your time with this one. It's not fairly representing everyone who is mentioned in the book.