Whitehouse - Into the heart of our world : a journey to the center of the earth : a remarkable voyage of scientific discovery

INTO
THE
HEART
OF OUR
WORLD

A Journey to the Center of the Earth:
A Remarkable Voyage of Scientific Discovery

DAVID WHITEHOUSE

PEGASUS BOOKS

NEW YORK LONDON

To Bernard Carey and Derek William Whitehouse.
In Memoriam.

The internal regions of the Earth. A thin crust overlays the mantle the Earths most extensive region. Beneath it is an outer core of molten iron and a solid-iron inner core.

A 4.4-billion-year-old zircon. It is the oldest known piece of the Earth, a tiny fragment of its first crust.

The oldest rocks in the world exposed on the shores of Hudson Boy, Canada.

The Jack Hills in Western Australia, site of the worlds oldest zircons. They have enabled scientists to determine the conditions on the surface of the Earth just after it formed.

The deepest sample ever retrieved from a well, taken 12 km below the surface during the Kola Superdeep project.

The deepest hole ever drilled into the Earth the Kola Superdeep Borehole in northern Russia that reached a depth of 12,262 metres in 1989.

Emil Wiechert (18611928) produced the first model of a layered Earth, and became the worlds first professor of geophysics.

The first seismogram, recorded by Ernst von Rebeur-Paschwitz on 17 April 1889 in Potsdam, Germany. The earthquake originated in Japan.

A typical seismograph showing the pressure waves that travel through the Earth after an earthquake.

John Earthquake Milne (18501913) and his Japanese wife Tone on the Isle of Wight.

Richard Dixon Oldham (18581936) made the first clear identification of P waves, S waves and surface waves in seismograms, and also the first clear evidence that the Earth had a core.

Inge Lehmann (18881993), discoverer of the Earths inner core. In 1936, using earthquake data, she proposed that the Earths core was not all molten iron but had a solid centre.

Beno Gutenberg (18891960) made many pioneering discoveries in seismology. Along with Charles Richter he developed a scale for measuring the intensity of earthquakes.

Although he opposed the theory of continental drift, Harold Jeffreys (18911989) made seminal contributions to the study of the Earths interior.

A The most important solidearth process: subduction, whereby oceanic floor is thrust back into the mantle and recycled.

Percy Bridgman (18821961), pioneer of high-pressure research. The most abundant mineral in the Earth is named bridgmanite.

Inside this metal cell two opposing diamonds can create the pressures found deep within the Earth.

Map of the deep mantle. Once thought to be relatively featureless, modern science reveals it to be a very active region.

Vast structures, termed Large Low Sheer Velocity Provinces, lie atop the core-mantle boundary.

A rotating sphere of liquid sodium at the University of Maryland provides clues about the Earths internal dynamo.

I am scarcely able to believe in the reality of my adventures. They were so truly wonderful that even now I am bewildered when I think of them ...

This is the final conclusion of a narrative which will be probably disbelieved even by people who are astonished at nothing.

JuIes Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Other books by David Whitehouse

The Moon: A Biography

The Sun: A Biography

Renaissance Genius: Galileo Galilei and His Legacy to

Modern Science

One Small Step: The Inside Story of Space Exploration

On 8 February 1828, Jules Gabriel Verne was born the first of five children to Pierre and Sophie Verne. His father was a Parisian lawyer and his mother was of Scottish and Breton descent. Despite there being no literary heritage in his family, Jules wrote a great deal in his youth but it wasnt until he reached the age of thirty-five that he brought out his first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon. It was a great success. He followed it up with Paris in the 20th Century, which, to his surprise, was rejected by his publisher with harsh criticism. It would not be published until 1994. So, despite his initial success, he felt the pressure to produce another work that was acceptable to his publisher.