IN ONE of the Austin Powers films, Austin’s nemesis Dr Evil hatches an extravagant plan to threaten governments by drilling into the Earth to release streams of red-hot magma. Nought out of ten – the Earth’s crust does not float on molten rock. The mantle is solid. Plates do not just melt into the fiery deep. But without Dr Evil’s fanciful drilling programme, how would we know?
The past year has seen the arrival of some books that provide answers to this and a host of other questions – required reading for geoscience students and super-villains alike. We know that the…
