launch the doorway to a glass Great Pyramid , a visitor steps from the arid heating system of Arizona into a coastal fog desert that stretches toward a savanna . A Lilliputian ocean laps against a stony shoring . A passage leads to a steamy pelting wood where vine - necklaced trees tower 90 feet high . Here in Biosphere 2 , the world ’s largest controlled surround commit to clime research , scientists can tinker with surmount - down ecosystem by flip-flop off sprinkler and cranking up the thermoregulator to check about the effects of globular thaw out in the real Earth .
The facility has long been dwarf by its ill - fated 1991 maiden mission to constitute an analog of a ego - sustaining colony on another planet . But after some retooling and successful , gamy - profile studies — admit one that bring out warm oceans are killing coral — the gargantuan terrarium ( lead by the University of Arizona since 2011 ) is finally live up to its potency as a site for novel research .
In its half - Accho rain forest , scientist are probe how tropical ecosystems might weather late-21st - century heating system and drought . Researchers hope to try out with radical coral reef restoration methods in the enclosure ’s million - gallon sea soon , and in March 2022 the operation will unveil a Mars analogue that repeat the original founder ’ ambition of mime a plant - filled home ground on a exanimate alien human race . Biosphere 2 is effectively like a clock time machine that can preview a mood - altered Earth “ by changing the concentrations of gas in the atmosphere to those that we call up are going to exist in the future to see how the planet could make out , ” tell the facility ’s current managing director Joaquin Ruiz .
Outer space on EarthBiosphere 2 launch 30 age ago , on September 26 , 1991 , when a gang of eight — including a physician , plant scientist , and marine biologist — began a two - yr residence inside this 3.14 - acre terrarium . The structure , a prototype for an extraterrestrial home ground , was conceived by a counterculture theatre of operations company that partnered with businesspeople to form a troupe call Space Biosphere Ventures . It was mean to be a hermetically sealed ecosystem where several biome , 3,000 coinage of plant and creature , and a farm would provide the “ biospherians ” with all the air , urine , and food they needed . “ At the time , a bunch of scientist said it literally could not be done , that the whole affair was going to call on into green goo , ” says Jane Poynter , one of the original biospherians and beginner of spaceflight party Space Perspective .
Light bulb momentScientists did , in fact , learn something crucial from what went wrong : the ground was too rich in organic affair , and its roaring bacterium gobbled up too much O . At first , the researchers could not trail down the excess carbon dioxide those microbes should have released as a spin-off of that oxygen consumption . Eventually , they found it had chemically bonded with concrete in the construction . “ It was a light bulb present moment , ” says John Adams , Biosphere 2 ’s current surrogate conductor . “ They could delineate , molecule by molecule , where [ C ] was run and where it was being stored in ways that they could n’t outside ” in the real universe .
Read the thoroughgoing clause atwww.scientificamerican.com .
