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A Journey to the Center of the Earth
Gazing at the night sky and talking about stars, constellations, and galaxies, can be an entertaining and learning pastime for many of us, sharpening our curiosities and speculations about the mysteries of nature. In another article of this series titled Billions and Billions of Stars, I wrote that “the travel back to the time of the Big Bang can be fascinating, even if we think that some of it is fiction. We will not see any witches or dragons along the way, but we will get acquainted with some incredible stories and sights of black holes, white dwarfs, red giants, and quasars. These are the witches and dragons of the universe.”
This time we will take a journey in the opposite direction, toward the center of our home planet. We still may not encounter dragons, witches, or prehistoric monsters, but we will learn a great deal about what lies beneath.
Iceland is the most volcanic place on Earth and inspired Jules Verne to write Journey to the Center of the Earth, a classic science fiction novel that has been read by millions of young people around the world, entertaining them, fascinating them, and awakening their first curiosities about nature and science.
In the novel, eccentric and hot-tempered professor Otto Lidenbrock believed there are volcanic paths leading to the center of the earth. In the journey with his nephew and their…
