BBC2, December 27 to 31, 11.30am. Booklet, Pounds 3.50. BBC Education, Planet Earth, PO Box 7, London W5 TGQ. Video pack, Pounds 29, BBC Videos for Education and Training, Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 OTT

Eurfron Gwynne Jones looks forward to this year’s Royal Institution lectures

For many years, the rather empty days in the television schedules between Christmas and New Year have had one gem - the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. This year they are presenting “Planet Earth: an Explorer’s Guide”.

The lecturer, Dr James Jackson from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge, follows a long line of eminent scientists going back to 1826 when the lectures were conceived by Michael Faraday, pioneer of electricity.

An indication of the esteem in which these lectures have been held is given by the back of the Pounds 20 note where the engraving depicts a lecture given by Faraday on “The Chemistry of Combustion”, with Prince Albert and two young princes in the audience.

Aimed at young people, but with a wide general audience, the lectures have a regular television audience of one million. But this year they are being moved from their afternoon slot to a less favourable time of 11.30am.

It will be a great shame if the change makes the audience numbers fall, not least because it would give ammunition to those in television who believe that such programmes have no place in daytime schedules. However, any move to cut the annual lecture series would be hard to defend when the BBC is so committed to the coverage of science.

This year’s series of lectures could not have been given 30 years ago, as the scientific discipline underpinning them, plate tectonics, (the study of the movement of the plates that make up the Earth’s surface) is a comparatively recent one. Dr Jackson pins down its starting point as December 1967, when the first paper explaining the movements of the Earth’s surface was written. While pictures of Earth from space show a scene of tranquillity on our green and blue planet, plate tectonics has revealed a heaving and creeping reality beneath the surface.

However, if the spectacular views from space failed to reveal movements beneath the surface, they confirmed the representation found on classroom globes all over the world. Globes serve to stimulate questions of how the Earth has come to be as it is. Why do Africa and South America seem to belong together like parts of a jigsaw puzzle? What goes on under the surface and how can scientists set about finding out? The discovery of the answers to such questions form the basis of this year’s lectures.

As is often the case in science, the discoveries were made simultaneously in different parts of the world. The fact that they were made at all owed a great deal to new technologies developed as a result of world events of the past 50 years.

First, the technology developed to detect enemy submarines during the Second World War was used in the 1950s to map the ocean beds. The second prompt was the Cold War, which provided another boost as the US Air Force developed systems to monitor underground bomb tests. The final impetus came from the Space Age, in which NASA built equipment that allowed scientists to measure the movement of the curved plates that make up the Earth’s surface and on which the continents lie.

Dr Jackson believes that because of the cumulative discoveries of all those who have participated in the research, our understanding of how the Earth works has undergone its biggest change since we realised that the Earth orbited the Sun. His own specific contribution lies in unravelling how continents are deformed to make high mountains and deep basins.

The series is designed to bring science to a wide public, and Dr Jackson particularly believes that there is a pressing need for children to understand how the planet works. For instance, when natural disasters are reported in the news, children should know that these are caused by movements of the Earth, and that man’s interaction with the Earth continues to affect the environment.

Ominously he predicts that as the world’s population trebles by the end of the next century and cities become even larger, the headline “One million die in city destroyed by earthquake” will become a reality.

The place of the Earth sciences in the national curriculum has been something of a movable feast. But whether seen as part of the science or geography curriculum, teachers will find this year’s lectures and the accompanying booklet a valuable resource. They represent an involved, authoritative, enthusiastic and scientific account of up-to-the-minute knowledge of our planet.