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This morning I drove just a little north of Tucson to the Biosphere 2 Center near Oracle Arizona. It was built as a self-contained environment to test whether people could live, grow their own food and recycle oxygen, water and other necessities of life sealed off from the Earth's biosphere - the thin layer of atmosphere, water, soil and natural cycles that support life. Hence Biosphere 2. Eight people were sealed inside for 2 years. This picture is the habitat area and the "barn" where they kept pigs, chickens and goats. I guess I'm a wannabe scientist 'cause the things I got the biggest charge out of were this and the Kennedy Space Center.
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As you can see, it's like a huge greenhouse - 539 feet long and 91 feet high. The environment received nothing from the ouside except the sun's energy, as if it were in space or on another planet. The experiment was not completely successful - oxygen had to be added twice, and the "biospherians" were always hungry and lost a lot of weight. They claimed those two years were unusually cloudy and the plants didn't get enough sunlight to thrive. It's not sealed now, but parts of it can be sealed off for research - today the rainforest section was sealed off, and we could not go in.
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There are 5 "biomes" enclosed under the glass: tropical rainforest, desert, savanna grasslands, marsh, and ocean. The ocean (shown here) I thought was the most impressive. They have a living coral reef, a wave machine to realistically circulate the water, and a viewing room so you can see inside the tank. Originally, the Biosphere 2 was populated with insects, birds, and other animals, but only the fish remain. The "ocean" contains a self-perpetuating food chain, so the fish do not have to be fed. You can do this at home, too, if your fish tank is 40 feet deep and contains a million gallons of sea water.
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The Biosphere 2 was not only sealed above ground, but is encased in steel below ground as well. When it WAS sealed, it only exchanged 7% of it's atmosphere per year, which is 10,000 times more air-tight than a regular building. Underneath there is a lot of machinery that keep the "natural" systems going. It is still privately owned, but Columbia University manages the facility, and now it is a biology / ecology research laboratory. They just completed building housing for students to live while studying at the Center.
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The air inside expands when it warms during the day and contracts when it cools at night. Since it is completely sealed up, it would explode or implode if they did not have a device like this. They call this the lung. Inside there is a diaphragm, made of an aluminum dish and rubberized material, As the pressure rises, the air in the Biosphere goes out through a tunnel to the lung and the diaphragm expands like a balloon, then contracts again as the pressure lowers at night. There are two, and each one can handle the full volume of air alone in case the other fails. The air-tight seal can also be broken in an emergency. It might mess up the experiment, but at least the building would not be destroyed.
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Well this was so spectacular, I couldn't resist taking another picture. This is the fire from parking lot of the Center, on the opposite side of the mountain from the pictures I took yesterday. You can't really see it in the picture but there is an orange glow at the base of all the smoke. The smoke looked like a cloud bank all along the horizon. I talked with one of the docents who said he was angry at the news media for only reporting the wealthy neighborhoods that had been destroyed, and didn't even report when the fire was close to other less-affluent areas, such as Oracle where he lived. He understood the fire might be two hours from reaching his house and wondered if he should go home and prepare to evacuate. Fortunately for me I could just get in my car and drive to Phoenix.
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