Earth
There is drama beneath the surface, because Earth is more than just the planet we live on: it is alive and constantly changing. The exhibition is designed as a journey that begins with the planet’s fiery origins and ends with the Earth we know today. You will get a glimpse into Earth’s past and the processes that have contributed to the climate crisis we face today.
What you can experience
The exhibition is divided into five zones, which you can explore in any order or experience chronologically. The journey begins in darkness and drama and becomes brighter the further you go.
The origins of life. Travel back to the earliest life on Earth in a spectacular projection of hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. Join the search for the places where the first conditions for life may have arisen. Meet extremophile organisms that thrive in some of Earth’s most inhospitable environments, and stromatolites that are among the earliest traces of life, and producers of the oxygen that transformed the entire planet.
The living Earth. See how continents drift, collide and create mountains, and encounter the destructive and life-giving power of volcanoes, from the most extreme eruptions to those in our own backyard. Experience an Icelandic volcanic eruption up close – at the only place in the world where the rifts in the ocean floor can be seen on land.
Try the giant physical puzzle and see if you can fit all the continents together, just as they were hundreds of millions of years ago.
Fossils – photographs in stone. Explore Earth’s very own photo album. Fossils are not just old, dead animals: they are snapshots of dinosaur footprints, leaf impressions and tiny, exceptionally well-preserved arthropods frozen in time. They are the only physical evidence we have of what our planet looked like long before humans existed. Discover the stories hidden in fossils, how they are formed and how we determine their age.
Minerals in action. Minerals play an active role in the development of life and in your everyday life. They are found in your phone, your batteries, your medicine and the landscapes you live in. Without minerals, there would be no technology for the green transition; and without the processes that have formed them over billions of years, there would be no life on Earth.
See minerals change shape and colour and transform from liquid to solid. Measure the harmless radioactivity of minerals with a Geiger counter. Touch pebbles from the Danish coast and discover their hidden stories in a large-scale animation: ordinary stones hold both beauty and stories about how they were formed.
Climate and carbon. The journey ends with the climate – the state of the planet. Earth’s climate has always changed, but human activity is now changing it further. Follow the carbon cycle, from a cow’s stomach to the Danish raised bog, where CO₂ is stored. See Greenland as it once was, green, lush and covered in trees, long before the ice arrived.
- The mineral wall: Discover an amazing selection of beautiful minerals on the more than eight-metre-long mineral wall, and learn how minerals help shape landscapes, technology and life.
- Grow your own crystal: Choose its shape and colours and discover why it looks the way it does.
- A giant clam fossil: Encounter one of the world’s largest fossil clams, 83 million years old and resembling an oyster one and a half metres tall.
- Trace your home: Discover where on the globe your home would have been located 300 million years ago.
- The beach pebbles: Touch stones and fossils from Denmark’s coastline, and explore them in a large-scale animation showing how ordinary beach pebbles hold both beauty and hidden stories about how the climate and landscape have changed.
- Radioactive minerals: Measure the radiation with a Geiger counter and hear the sounds made by the rocks.
- The stromatolites: Explore some of the earliest traces of life on Earth and hear how life produced oxygen, changing the planet forever.
- The climate impact of a cow’s stomach: Discover how a cow’s burp affects the climate, following the journey from the cow’s stomach to the peat in a raised bog, where carbon is stored.
The planet that never stands still
Earth has not finished evolving. Beneath your feet, continents slowly drift, mountains rise and wear away, and minerals form and transform at a pace we can scarcely imagine. What looks like still, silent rock is in fact the planet’s pulse: volcanoes build new land, rain and plants break down the old, and carbon moves between the air, ocean and rocks in a cycle that began long before humans existed.
The first organisms changed the atmosphere forever when they began producing oxygen, and life has since helped form thousands of the minerals the museum displays today. Coral reefs are built from limestone produced by living animals, and every plant root draws minerals up from the soil. You yourself are, quite literally, made of stardust – material that came together to form our solar system and everything that makes life on Earth possible. Minerals and life have evolved together. Without minerals, there would be no life; but life has also contributed to the diversity of minerals we see today.
Earth’s climate has always changed: Greenland was once green and covered in trees, and ice ages have at times covered the entire globe. We can see this for ourselves in fossils and ice cores, which preserve clues to past climates. But something is different now: never before has a single species changed the planet as quickly as we are changing it today. And that means we also have the power to change its course. That is the thought the exhibition leaves you with.
