A system called Earth. What makes you so special? How did you form? How did it evolve? Where you go?

The answers to these questions are at your disposal in this exhibition whose visit will last for hours or minutes…

your will will decide. Let yourself be guided by it and go through the exhibition at your own pace… it was programmed for that. Although there is a common thread, let your taste choose the time you dedicate to each subject presented. Pleasure is not compatible with impositions.

The exposure

To understand the Earth is, first of all, to understand how it was formed and its relationship with the Universe. Later…

it is enough to understand where our Planet's Energy comes from and how it works… Impossible task is so vast?...

Maybe not! And, of course, what does all this have to do with the region where we are located?

(Estremoz – Portugal)? Why are there Marbles in Alentejo?

The Hourglass of Millions

Accustomed since always to count in units, tens and hundreds, or at most thousands, Man has no

the ability to truly perceive large numbers. However, in the History of the Universe almost everything

is measured in millions: millions of years, millions of degrees of temperature, millions of kilometers, millions of

of dead... Who can recognize a million? This hourglass allows you to see a million...

of objects. Imagine that each one took a year to fall... here's a million years. A long time...

and yet just a moment

in the History of our Planet born about 4 550 million years ago.

Standing or moving?

In a society dominated by haste, we don't realize what slow speeds are for us… and super slow ones.

The concept of velocity implies the ability to evaluate a displacement performed in a given period of time. It is not always easy to differentiate objects that are stationary

of others moving at extremely slow speeds; we know that nails are continually moving because we have to cut them… but we are unable to see

your displacement.

When we move on to the study of the Earth, the problem becomes more complicated. The time periods are now estimated taking as a unit the  million years. Many of the geological phenomena, even for observations accumulated over generations, tend to

showing a static planet. For example,

the Himalayas have apparently the same shape to Man since he appeared

in the land.

Popular tradition says that it is firm as a rock and that it remains made of stone and lime, images of the properties of rocks extrapolated to situations in which it is necessary to give an example of something eternal and immutable. Nothing could be more deceiving… Man sometimes doesn't remember that soft water on hard stone hits so much that it breaks. The accumulation of events, at the scale of the millimeter per year, during the immensity

of geological time makes any situation ephemeral and transitory.