The
center of planet Earth is not accessible to in-person exploration. However, the laboratory provides a safe place to simulate conditions of the core, and more scientists are doing so now than at any other time.
When Jules Verne wrote A Journey to the Centre of the Earth over 100 years ago, he imagined a place of glowing crystals and a turbulent sea, complete with prehistoric animals and giant mushrooms.
...To understand what form it might take under the extreme conditions at the centre of the Earth, Professor Kei Hirose set himself a seemingly impossible challenge: recreate the conditions of the core in his lab at the SPring-8 synchrotron near Osaka, Japan. After 10 years of trying, he has finally succeeded.
