magma

Even the magma itself isn't liquid, just ductile solid.

Around the tower I built a magma moat for defense from the marauding goblins and zombies.

* We're talking about subduction zones where the underlying magma conveyor belt is going down.

But you can pretty accurately map magma under the surface using seismology.

* The lithospheric magma is not hot enough to vaporize or even liquify solid capsules of nuclear waste.

A long time back, to test thermal conductivity, he took control of a magma man, grabbed on to an adventurer's head with both hands, and waited for its various tissues to catch on fire / melt.

This is why one of the best computational algebra softwares magma is only available for absurdly high prices, even though was developed as an academic project.

It sounds like they didn't intend to drill into magma, but is it possible to survey the land and intentionally find magma near the surface to exploit in this manner?If not, isn't the question of whether you can effectively harness the energy or not moot?

In Dwarf Fortress terms this means I built a powered pump system to extract magma from the earth and water from a nearby river and used the water and magma to cast obsidian for a stone tower which I then hollowed out with rooms and storage areas as a dwelling place for my dwarves.

I guess large-scale geothermal power plants are an unproven concept, but isn't the risk of volcanic eruptions completely independent of whether we tap it for energy or not?\nPerhaps there could be a scenario where the sudden cooling of a region in the magma pocket could lead to clogging and local overpressure.

There are always hippos in the sewers, or cats breeding out of control, or ant-people that want to eat you, or a berzerk dwarf baby killing his family, or some monster from down deep getting up your stairwell and terrorizing your fortress, or a magma accident, or a dwarf who decides to lock himself in a workshop, depriving you of that shop abilities while he spends his sweet time making stuff.

Besides creating electricity, there are many potential industrial uses of magma:"Magma serves as a heat source, replacing fuel in magma smelters, magma forges, magma glass furnaces, and magma kilns...Other uses for magma include obsidian farming, trap design, melting ice, igniting fires, and even garbage disposal.