Biossphere 2

I've been in Tucson, AZ for almost a week now. Yesterday we went to the Biosphere2. It was a tour well worth taking. If you've never heard of the biosphere it is basically a glass bubble. Built to be an entirely self-contained system the facility is sealed from the earth below by a steel liner between layers of concrete. Precipitation filters from the outside world through soil where it is collected into big tanks in the basement, then recycled through sprinklers as faux showers inside the dome. Inside the arching glass and frame enclosure dwell a rainforest, marsh, tropical savannah, million-gallon ocean, and coastal fog desert.

Mission 1 consisted of 4 men and 4 women. They were to be in there for 3 years. Fighting and unforeseen problems, such as insects and food shortages, undermined the projects success.

It was the year of EL Nino and they hadn't anticipated the problems of bees not being able to pollenate. They all died and the biospherians had to hand pollenate. They were working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day and were starving. They began fighting bitterly. They lived off of mostly beets and sweet potatoes which caused their skin to glow orange.

You can't get a suntan inside the Biosphere 2 because the glass panels won't let in UV light (it would've been too expensive to engineer). Turns out bees need UV light to breed and navigate, which is why they died. You'd think scientists would know this already!

Remember the movie Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore? That's the Biosphere 2. Learn more and see pictures at www.b2science.org.