Remember Biosphere 2?

As a child my dream was to become an astronaut. Until it dawned on me that with my congenital heart defect plus being slightly claustrophobic this was not likely going to happen. What remained was a fascination for exploring outer space, the dream of one day being able to colonize distant planets and re-creating Earth under new (and hopefully improved) circumstances. I was sure that if I could, I would be one of the first ones to go.

"Aerial view of Biosphere 2 in the Arizona desert"


A project that truly awed me at that time was the Biosphere 2, a giant man-made enclosed ecosystem completely sealed off from its surroundings. Two "closed bubble" missions were carried out, the first lasting from 1991-93 with a crew of 8 people sealed inside; the second, starting in 1994, had to be broken off prematurely due to internal quarrels about the project's funding and the direction in which research was going. I remember seeing images of pale, thin scientists being ushered out of the gigantic complex by US Federal Marshals. All in all, Biospehere 2 was considered to be a tremendous flop. Both Missions had trouble regulating the oxygen levels inside the sealed structure. Animals died or failed to reproduce while one ant species which was accidentally locked in, became too dominant.

Now, more than 15 years later, the structure still stands, and is a research site under the management of the University of Arizona. Wired Science has recently launched some interesting articles, which sum up the problems and points out that there actually were valubale papers written and insights gained from this large scale, scientific, social and psychological experiment.

read more here: wired1, wired2, wikipedia

"inside Biosphere 2"


images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons