As the world progresses into the industrial age, a professor studying the "nature of pure matter" is spirited away by a would-be dictator and connived into building a super-bomb, as a young reporter and a girl rescued from the sea attempt to warn him of their mutual kidnapper's intentions to dominate the world with a new and more-deadly-yet weapon.
Four schoolboys go on an awe-inspiring expedition back through time, where they behold landscapes and creatures that have long since vanished from the earth.
When a comet passes the Earth very closely, it pulls a small part of North Africa, and a small swathe of humanity, along with it.
