Welteislehre

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.

Fauth had previously produced a large (if somewhat inaccurate) lunar map and had a considerable following, which lent Hörbiger's ideas some respectability.

[3] It did not receive a great deal of attention at the time, but following World War I Hörbiger changed his strategy by promoting the new "cosmic truth" not only to people at universities and academies, but also to the general public.

"[5] Supporters of the idea were Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the leading theorist behind the early development of the National Socialist Party in Germany in 1923, and later both Hitler and Himmler.

This impact caused a huge explosion that flung fragments of the smaller star out into interstellar space where the water condensed and froze into giant blocks of ice.

Interplanetary space is filled with traces of hydrogen gas, which cause the planets to slowly spiral inwards, along with ice blocks.

If it was pointed out that there existed photographic evidence that the Milky Way was composed of millions of stars, he responded that the pictures had been faked by "reactionary" astronomers.

He responded in a similar way when it was pointed out that the surface temperature of the Moon had been measured in excess of 100 °C in the daytime, writing to rocket expert Willy Ley: "Either you believe in me and learn, or you will be treated as the enemy.

[citation needed] As Martin Gardner argued in Chapter Three of his Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, Hörbiger's ideas have much in common with those of Immanuel Velikovsky.