Today is going to be a science post following an interesting day out. Brenda and I thought we’d take a trip to Biosphere 2, a scientific project, run by the University of Arizona, just a few miles up the road from us. It’s a huge, enclosed structure that studies the effects of environment on plant life, and the scale of the project is immense.

Front of the main greenhouse

The structure is nearly 100 ft high at the peak and extends the length of 3 football fields. Originally it was designed to be completely sealed from the world and there are airlock doors everywhere. It’s a truly amazing project and one I felt was worthy of including in a blog considering the science nature of my writings (and yes there is a even a space link). We started our day with a 90 minute tour of the main greenhouse area, seeing the various habitats they have created to study the effects of heat, humidity and water availability on plant life. From there we went down into the bowels of the structure to see the amazing machinery that controls and maintains the conditions in each section. At the end of this part came the big WOW! moment of the day for me. Going inside one of the ‘lungs’ of the building. Basic science lesson here. As air heats up, it expands and as it cools, it contracts. And remember I said that the building was designed to be completely sealed. You can see from the above picture how big the structure is and the volume of air involved. So without a way to regulate the air pressure, when the temperature inside rises, the glass panels would explode, when it cools, they would implode. And so to the ‘lung’, It’s a circular chamber with a  40 ft diameter rubber membrane in the ceiling that supports a 20 ft diameter steel plate in the center. The plate and membrane together weigh about 20 tons. The plate sits about 15 ft in the air, supported by nothing more than air pressure. It’s an amazing sight to see this thing and realize that it’s literally ‘floating on air’.

The space travel part of the day comes with the LEO Project (Landscape Evolution Observatory) where they are studying where water goes once it enters the ecosystem. Part of the study also looks at how to grow plants from bare rock material that has been ground up to produce an inert soil. This, of course, has implications on how we might provide growing areas out of moon rock or perhaps martian soil. So the project has a link to our possible expansion into the solar system and beyond.

After a light lunch we returned to the main building for a marine/beach tour where we got to see the ocean habitat close up and even participate in the work to rebuild this section. The waters of the habitat have become clogged with algae and today the scientists were taking another step to clean up this area as part of a revamp. The cleaning method? Release 5,000 hermit crabs into the water and let them eat the algae. Of course, they’ll also do studies on the migration patterns of the crabs in the tank as well as their eating habits. The link to this project is here Build An Ocean In The Desert  and is well worth a look. Our part of the project today? Taking some of the crabs and releasing them into the water.

As far as thrilling days go, it’s certainly not a roller-coaster, but it was fun and highly educational. So if you’re in Southern Arizona and have a few hours to spare it’s certainly worth a look.