Learning from the empty

Rummaging through our mountain of laundry we know what we got on Tuesday pants or shirt which we had on Thursday ... Likewise, the presence of sedimentary rocks helps us to understand the landscape of the past. But something even more surprising ... written in the rocks provide clues not only silicon, carbon or iron ... The vacuum has a lot to say. In fact, Nuno, professor of our first excursion told us: "The strata are empty sequence interrupted by sedimentary material."

It's incredible! We spend our lives trying to fill and saturate ... when the greatest mystery, the most sublime charm, it is the emptiness. By training, my mind has always felt more comfortable in environments holes. If we think of atoms, for example, the nucleus of an atom is about 100,000 times smaller than the atom itself. So it ends up being a lot of emptiness. Last Saturday, thanks to a group of young paleontologists, I rediscovered the importance of nowhere. Being i are not being around for knowledge.

On Sunday also witnessed another initiative of great expectations. We made a geological tour in Lisbon. It seemed like a great idea and acertadísima crazy. And that is, how someone would have thought that a college professor get several dozen people who look at the pavement of the floor of his city, with high attention for more than twenty minutes?

Said and done! The Lisbon pavement is made with different types of rock: Calcarea, magma ... We could even see their reactions to the acid and its ease or resistance to being cut.

And if looking at the ground was not entertaining enough, we can find various fossils embedded in rocks that built the city as beautiful buildings.

As you know, do not mask the science, not to be found in strange places ... If dance is physical and paleontology in Lisbon, could it be that science is part of our lives?

Once back to my beloved city and county libraries walking around looking for something interesting to read, I found a title, a minimum, caught my attention: How to fossilize your hamster and other amazing experiments for armchair scientists. As for now, my travel plan makes a break, I could not let the opportunity to read this book sitting in an armchair, chair or couch. The truth is that I have wanted to implement some of the proposals in a single tone, Mick O'Hare described in this book. Who does not want to fry an egg and to go green? o Who would not want to weigh your head?!!

Of course, those like me, optéis to fill your homes domestic experiments, remember that you need fossilize your hamster that the poor animal dies of natural causes (not trying to do an extermination of hamsters) and a range of environmental conditions. Surely, we can not see the result, since the fossil takes thousands of years to form, but will work with future paleontologists ...

“. Sinister as he sang, "Smile when you go to fossilize, do not think after you've gone wrong." Well, that, not being embarrassed and stay alive one more season, the vacuum still has much to teach us.

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