Carl Innes, age 10, of Peterboro, Ont. 

Is it true that there is gas inside the earth?

Nobody has ever been down into the middle of the earth. So we do not know for certain what it is like. However, we do have some good ideas. Most of our information is given by earthquakes. A big tremblor sets off vibrations shivering and shaking right through the middle of the earth. A vibration can tell us a great deal.. You know that your voice travels better over the water,, Vibrations also travel better through some substances than through others.

There are gadgets for checking these earthquake vibrations as they do down, down into the earth, They tell us how solid, how deep and how dense the substances are way down in the earth. Nowhere under the ground do these vibrations pass through any layers of gases. In fact the material down there is far, far, more solid than the surface ground. The earth gets more and more dense the deeper we go. The earth is enfolded in rocky shells one below the other. We can put the information from earthquake shocks together and imagine ourselves in a tunnel down into the middle of the earth.

The first mile takes us down through rocks and soil. For every 65 feet we go, the temperature rises oro degree Fahrenheit. The weight of rocks pressing down makes things hot below. The lower we go, the hotter it gets. We get through the outer layer of the earth's crust in 30 to 50 miles. The next layer is harder, denser and hotter. The weight of the crust over every square inch is now about 75 tons. This second layer is called the inner mantle and it lasts for some 600 miles.

The next rocky shell is even denser, harder and hotter. earthquake information shows it to be about as solid as steel. It lasts for some 1200 miles. When we get through its we shall be more than 1800 miles below the surface of the earth. We shall be at the very edge of what we call the earths core.

This is a heavy seething hot ball in the middle of the world. It is far, far too heavy to be masses of gases. In fact it is made of the heaviest substances in the world, substances in the world, most likely nickle and iron. Its temperature runs to thousands of degrees. It is hot enough down there to melt nickel and iron and even turn these metals to gases. But this does not happen. For the seething core of the earth is bottled up tight in layer upon layer of heavy rocks„ The weight of each square inch of the earth’s core is thought to be 27,000 tons. The seething metals have no chance of breaking out from such a prison.

Nor have they any chance to turn into hot gases. Gas needs plenty of space to spread out aril expand. These materials are packed and crushed close together. Some experts thought they formed a seething liquid. Nowadays most experts believe that the earth's core is in a sort of waxy, plastic state, not hard and solid, not liquid and not gas. But, of course, we shall probably never know for sure until someone builds that imaginary tunnel of ours and goes down to take a look.