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The Blog of Axel Lidenbrock : June 7th 1863

From: Harry Hayfield <harryhayfield~at~googlemail.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2008 22:59:09 +0100
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

BlankToday's been a very quiet day really so not much to report on the
shipping front so I'd like if I may just to explain in a bit more detail
about my personal feelings about this expedition / escapade dependent on
your viewpoint.

When my uncle told me that he was committed to do, I have to admit that I
had concerns. But my uncle being a man of science detailed each concern and
tried in his own way to reassure me. The first question was the temperature
at the centre of the earth.

"It is perfectly well known that the internal temperature rises one degree
for every 70 feet in depth" I said, "now, admitting this proportion
to be constant, and the radius of the earth being fifteen hundred leagues,
there must be a temperature of 360,032 degrees at the centre of the earth.
Therefore, all the substances that compose the body of this earth must exist
there in a state of incandescent gas; for the metals that most resist the
action of heat, gold, and platinum, and the hardest rocks, can never be
either solid or liquid under such a temperature"

My uncle had to agree with my analysis of the situation but didn't seem to
offer a reply so I moved on to my next point, "Were we to reach a depth of
thirty miles we should have arrived at the limit of the terrestrial crust,
for there the temperature will be more than 2372 degrees and I do not need
to tell a man of such expertise that the human body cannot tolerate
temperatures much above 100, yet alone 2400!"

In other words, I was convinced that the deeper underground we got, the
hotter it would get and I for one did not want to be burnt to a crisp. My
uncle then spouted one of his stories,

"Humphry Davy did call upon me on his way through Hamburg (when I pointed
out that I was not born yet). We were long engaged in discussing, amongst
other problems, the hypothesis of the liquid structure of the terrestrial
nucleus. We were agreed that it could not be in a liquid state, for a reason
which science has never been able to confute. Because this liquid mass would
be subject, like the ocean, to the lunar attraction, and therefore twice
every day there would be internal tides, which, upheaving the terrestrial
crust, would cause periodical earthquakes!"

I hate it when my uncle is right, and that's why I'm here heading towards a
volcano that may explode at any moment just like Tambora did and leave me
totally unrecognisible for my dear Gräuben. And yet he is my uncle and
there's very little I can do about that.

Received on Sun 08 Jun 2008 - 00:59:32 IDT

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