Welteislehre
thumb|The 1925 "Journal of World Ice Theory" ' (WEL; "World Ice Theory" or "World Ice Doctrine"), also known as ' (Glacial Cosmogony), is a discredited cosmological concept proposed by Hanns Hörbiger, an Austrian engineer and inventor. According to his ideas, ice was the basic substance of all cosmic processes, and ice moons, ice planets, and the "global ether" (also made of ice) had determined the entire development of the universe. Hörbiger did not arrive at his ideas through research, but said that he had received it in a "vision" in 1894. He published a book about the theory in 1912 and he
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- History
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- See also
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thumb|The 1925 "Journal of World Ice Theory" ' (WEL; "World Ice Theory" or "World Ice Doctrine"), also known as ' (Glacial Cosmogony), is a discredited cosmological concept proposed by Hanns Hörbiger, an Austrian engineer and inventor. According to his ideas, ice was the basic substance of all cosmic processes, and ice moons, ice planets, and the "global ether" (also made of ice) had determined the entire development of the universe. Hörbiger did not arrive at his ideas through research, but said that he had received it in a "vision" in 1894. He published a book about the theory in 1912 and heavily promoted it in subsequent years, through lectures, magazines and associations.
==History== thumb|Hanns Hörbiger By his own account, Hörbiger was observing the Moon when he was struck by the notion that the brightness and roughness of its surface were due to ice. Shortly after, he dreamt that he was floating in space watching the swinging of a pendulum which grew longer and longer until it broke. "I knew that Newton had been wrong and that the sun's gravitational pull ceases to exist at three times the distance of Neptune", he concluded. He worked out his concepts in collaboration with amateur astronomer and schoolteacher Philipp Fauth whom he met in 1898, and published it as in 1912. Fauth had previously produced a large (if somewhat inaccurate) lunar map and had a considerable following, which lent Hörbiger's ideas some respectability.