In the last few days, new publicly available web tools and data files have been premiered by the British Geological Survey, that allow anyone to see the geological details of any part of the UK at their OpenGeoscience website.

Theoretically this can show maps with geological overlays to show what lies beneath, right in your web browser, but I couldn't get it to show more than an unadorned map, which was rather disappointing. Still – it's better than it was right after the launch, when all I could get was an empty white square and no map at all. Maybe in a week or two once the rush has died down and they've worked out the kinks, that feature will start to show its true promise.

If you can't wait, you can download data files for Google Earth and see the UK's geology mapped onto Google's view of the planet, with all the neat features that engenders. The image above is a screenshot of that in action (click for full-size). You can of course zoom right in to your own house to see what the local geology is.