A 2 hour adventure-geology special produced in High Definition. The programme uses costume drama sequences, advanced computer imaging and state-of-the-art science filming to tell the story of what lies beneath our feet - all the way to the centre!

Since we were children we've wanted to know what's at the centre of the earth and if we dug a hole, could we go there and what would it be like?

In the 19th Century, French author Jules Verne had the same thoughts and he wrote, possibly the first science-fiction book ever, 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth'. Little was known then, about the science of our planet and although Verne carefully researched the subject, there was little fact at that time on which to base his adventure. He had his explorers climb down into the earth through an extinct volcano and follow caves and tunnels to the earth's centre. Along the way, they found forests of giant mushrooms, they witnessed fighting dinosaurs and found living fossils.

Surely, today, we could dig a tunnel the 4,000 miles to the centre of the earth. It would be a massive engineering project, but what problems would there be on the way?
Jules Verne's explorers travelled right the way to the centre through natural caves and lava tubes but in fact the deepest caves only go to 5,000 feet. The world's deepest mines, the gold mines of South Africa, drop to about 12,000 feet and the deepest anyone has ever been, is in a submersible into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, 35,000 feet down.

It's more than 21 million feet to the centre of the earth and a tunnel could be used to find valuable minerals, we could build everlasting power stations there that would require no fuel and would be emission free and we could build a global transport system. It would take about 45 minutes to travel through the earth by a tunnel powered only by gravity.

The programme also explores the link between volcanoes and earthquakes and we experience an earthquake as it happens 10 miles down. We explore magnetism and how the Earth generates it's magnetic shield and after "sailing" through the outer core, we cut our way to the very centre of the Earth.