Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you, wasn't it stuck to blow
Speaker 1: your mind? My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Julie Ducks.
Speaker 1: This is part two of our two part series on
Speaker 1: biosphere two. UM. This is definitely one of those that
Speaker 1: if you didn't listen to part one, you really need
Speaker 1: to go back and listen to part one because there's
Speaker 1: very much the uh uh the second helping on this topic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although we will attempt to give you like a two
Speaker 1: minute rundown on this alright, uh talking about a desert arc, yes,
Speaker 1: in around talking about eight people dressed like star trek ease, Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of in a ascending from a cult like structure
Speaker 1: that was very much in tune with an environmental ideas
Speaker 1: and gazing beyond planet Earth to possible uh care of
Speaker 1: forming of other worlds, yes, and submitting themselves into this
Speaker 1: desert arc, this biodome so that they could try to
Speaker 1: accomplish this kind of terraforming task and as you say,
Speaker 1: a sort of CULTI like a group. These people came
Speaker 1: out of um all under the management of Johnny Dolphin
Speaker 1: that's actually the pen name for John Allen who was
Speaker 1: the group's leader, and this centric Texan millionaire Edward Bass,
Speaker 1: who funded the whole two hundred million dollar projects. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in indeed kicking this thing off, you have vision,
Speaker 1: you have finance, and you end up having one of
Speaker 1: the biggest uh scientific megaprojects you could you could ask for,
Speaker 1: certainly to come out of out of the private sphere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because again we're talking about more than seven million cubic
Speaker 1: feet here this biodome. We're talking about five different habitats
Speaker 1: in the ocean, a desert, rainforest and turned on also
Speaker 1: an agricultural area, beautiful agriculture and all of it, all
Speaker 1: of it just created by like some people at the
Speaker 1: top of their field. They didn't skimp on this. It
Speaker 1: wasn't somebody just trying to recreate um technology out in
Speaker 1: the desert. They were ringing in great minds. UH. Put
Speaker 1: a lot of money into this and it was meant
Speaker 1: to last a hundred years with revolving crews as we
Speaker 1: would continue to learn from the biosphere and perfect the technology.
Speaker 1: But after two years are are eight Biospherians emerged very underweight,
Speaker 1: I would say, and orange and orange because of their diet.
Speaker 1: But you know, they survived and and they learned some
Speaker 1: things about that. But there was so much momentum and
Speaker 1: really money that was caught up in this project already
Speaker 1: that there was a second Enclosure experiment that began in March.
Speaker 1: But you know, as we discussed in their first episode,
Speaker 1: the first the first mission was kind of a bust, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the second one was doomed from the start. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they really gave it. I mean the first mission they
Speaker 1: went the full two years. They stuck with it despite
Speaker 1: all of the problems, the infighting, the infighting, coaches, the cockroaches,
Speaker 1: they just spiraling collapse of everything, the the extinctions. It was,
Speaker 1: everything was in just pretty bad shape. But then yeah,
Speaker 1: they they pushed on and they said, all right, let's
Speaker 1: spruce it up, let's get some new people in there,
Speaker 1: let's go to phase two. But it was very much
Speaker 1: like that that final date in a relationship where maybe
Speaker 1: one side thinks that this can still work. You know,
Speaker 1: we still got it, we still got the magic, and
Speaker 1: the other side has arrived at the dinner to break up.
Speaker 1: This is the money man, right, this is Bass and
Speaker 1: uh he Edward Bass at this point is really frustrated
Speaker 1: by the growing costs and the lack of communication because again,
Speaker 1: as we had discussed in the other episode, there's a
Speaker 1: lack of transparency. That kind of pr is bad, and
Speaker 1: so he tries to seize back the property with the
Speaker 1: help of federal marshals. Now days later, two of the
Speaker 1: original Biospherians tried to sab taj the experiment, opening the
Speaker 1: doors to the outside. So just after seven months here
Speaker 1: the second phase, the second enclosure experiment, it ends. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the energy alone has been has been sulid,
Speaker 1: you know, and so much of that first venture, that
Speaker 1: first crew, that first two years in the biosphere too,
Speaker 1: it was sustained by that energy, I feel, and without
Speaker 1: that energy, with that tarnished, I mean, it's just not
Speaker 1: gonna go. Yeah. And at points you could even say
Speaker 1: they may have achieved, you know, briefly for minutes, you know,
Speaker 1: a utopia. They've had those waterfalls, they were they were
Speaker 1: actually harvesting wheat, they were sustaining themselves. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: it comes to any utopia idea is ultimately a tragedy story.
Speaker 1: You know, these are utopias exist in our our stories
Speaker 1: in large parts so that they can fall. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of what happened with bi And what I love
Speaker 1: about this too is it's such a microcosm of the
Speaker 1: corporate world because you know, the first crew, it all,
Speaker 1: it all goes to Helena hand ask, so to speak.
Speaker 1: And what does management do Instead of saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we should reassess this project or maybe just stop doing it,
Speaker 1: they say, oh, it's just new people we need, we
Speaker 1: need new energy in here, and they get a new
Speaker 1: crew in um. So bad management happening. So what happens
Speaker 1: to our sparkling treasure in the desert. Well, one of
Speaker 1: the key things here is that you even without even
Speaker 1: with all this failure behind us, it's still a fabulous structure.
Speaker 1: It's still a fabulous facility. I mean, it's it's unparallel.
Speaker 1: There's nothing else like it on earth. So it's extremely valuable.
Speaker 1: It's not just low let's doze it. Let's turn into
Speaker 1: them all like, that's not the first idea that anyone
Speaker 1: turns to. And certainly, even with the with the problems
Speaker 1: that occurred, even with this, you know, the failure of it,
Speaker 1: it still means a lot to the people who conceived
Speaker 1: it and paid for it. Sure, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them stayed with the project UM, and I don't mean
Speaker 1: the biosperience themselves, other some I'm still consult with it. UM.
Speaker 1: In the summer ninety five, Columbia University takes over the
Speaker 1: lease and those rice patties and sweet potato fields, the
Speaker 1: sweetato fields that sustained half of their diet the first
Speaker 1: year for the biasperiens. Those are pulled up and cotton
Speaker 1: wood trees are planted in their place, and researchers partitioned
Speaker 1: off the giant greenhouse, varying the conditions in each area.
Speaker 1: So that was one of the criticisms of the original
Speaker 1: project that there was no controls. Even though you could
Speaker 1: say there were some controls in place, they were trying
Speaker 1: to control the atmosphere. So the university or Columbia University
Speaker 1: begins to study how changes in temperature at different heights
Speaker 1: of the tree canopy effect leaf respiration. And they start
Speaker 1: to look at different species of invasive ants that had
Speaker 1: snuck in and try to figure out, um, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the reef building in the ocean and how
Speaker 1: to monitor that. So you get these inklings that hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we could repurpose some of this. Yeah, they and
Speaker 1: they seem to be hitting their stride just around two
Speaker 1: thousand three, but that's when it in the least ends
Speaker 1: and uh and then it ends up it's kind of
Speaker 1: being shuttered again. One of the problems here is that
Speaker 1: is that it was still really costly, uh six thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per year mostly for cooling to run this thing.
Speaker 1: And there's stuff that the university wanted to do that
Speaker 1: they couldn't do because they quote unquote couldn't break it.
Speaker 1: You know, they there were limits to how much they
Speaker 1: could they could mess with the with the infrastructure and
Speaker 1: with the environments. Yeah, and it's still tied to John Ellen, right,
Speaker 1: so he's only going to let people mess with it
Speaker 1: to a certain decree. And it's still all essentially on
Speaker 1: loan from its owner at best. Yeah, So after two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, essentially just becomes a kind of roadside
Speaker 1: tourist attraction. And at the same time there's this robust
Speaker 1: suburb springing up around it, and it's just a ghost facility.
Speaker 1: Like you said, you could you could look through the
Speaker 1: windows and you'd see like pins still setting on desk.
Speaker 1: You know. It was just right, yeah, haunted by the
Speaker 1: ghosts of the ghosts of the spirit that when into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just beautiful decay at this point. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. When we get back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about rebooting the biosphere. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: Um now, as you know, at this point in its history,
Speaker 1: it was sold to Wonka Industry and they began creating chocolate. No, no,
Speaker 1: not really at the end. All right, if you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts, you can always email that now. But in reality,
Speaker 1: we hit the year two thousand seven and then we
Speaker 1: finally begin to see some movement again. And this comes
Speaker 1: from the University of Arizona, uh and and this really
Speaker 1: came in the nick of time because at this point,
Speaker 1: like you said, condos were springing up and the facility
Speaker 1: was at real risk of being bulldosed so they could
Speaker 1: put up some more condos. So University of Arizona steps
Speaker 1: and they take over the lease. And in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven, after they've been working on it for a while,
Speaker 1: the building was officially donated to the university, and Bass
Speaker 1: ended up contributing twenty million dollars to help get the
Speaker 1: project off the ground. Because again, you know, he was
Speaker 1: he was never he was still invested in it, not
Speaker 1: only financially, but that invested in the spirit of it.
Speaker 1: Like I feel like this is a guy who didn't
Speaker 1: want he didn't want that that that that biosphere too
Speaker 1: to become the biosphere to condos. Yeah, because I think
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, he believes in the
Speaker 1: project and understood that it could have long term impact.
Speaker 1: So it was great that University of Arizona stepped in
Speaker 1: and in two thousands and something that really did become
Speaker 1: interested in it because they wanted to study the relationship
Speaker 1: between the desert and the ocean. And they found that
Speaker 1: the Gulf of California, the closest marine environment to the
Speaker 1: snore and desert, could be studied in the biosphere. Uh
Speaker 1: that the oceans environment that the biosphere had. So for
Speaker 1: them it was like this big moment of uh, Okay,
Speaker 1: we could really figure out what's going on in this
Speaker 1: certain body of water by emulating it here in a
Speaker 1: controlled environment, we can mess around and we can get
Speaker 1: some really conclusive data. And moreover, you also, by the way,
Speaker 1: have this seven million cubic foot atmosphere, this artificial atmosphere,
Speaker 1: which is the largest of its kind in the world,
Speaker 1: and it's really the only place where you can kind
Speaker 1: of study these sort of things in earnest. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: while the original ocean was meant to to to be
Speaker 1: reminiscent of the Caribbean and all these coral reefs. Um,
Speaker 1: they they end up saying, well, let's take a more
Speaker 1: local model and installid in here. Uh. Let's get a
Speaker 1: little less spaceship with the biosphere too, uh and and
Speaker 1: focus more on studying more immediate environment. Yeah, and more
Speaker 1: immediately which we'll talk about in a little bit of
Speaker 1: this idea that you can you have like a model
Speaker 1: that is expressing itself over a matter of days rather
Speaker 1: than years. Um. Also they could test out marine technology,
Speaker 1: which is really helpful. Yeah. So you end up with
Speaker 1: a mini ocean, a scale down version of the Gulf
Speaker 1: of California. Uh and uh, and you end up with
Speaker 1: like starfish, sea arch and small reef fish and bottom
Speaker 1: dwelling sharks called the horn shark. And they really want
Speaker 1: to get Humboldt squid in there as well. Yeah. Those
Speaker 1: are awesome. Um. So what you see here is a
Speaker 1: legacy that's beginning to develop, because now the bios here
Speaker 1: too has spawn something like one and fifty papers, right,
Speaker 1: all these different studies that are going on. It's proved
Speaker 1: that people could indeed exist in a completely closed system,
Speaker 1: a manufactured system. Uh yeah, they suffered depression, they became
Speaker 1: incredibly thin, but they survived. And so this was also
Speaker 1: a precursor for isolated confined environment psychology and bast here
Speaker 1: to really, according to David L. Chandler, writing for Wired,
Speaker 1: demonstrated that ecology can be a science. So previous to this,
Speaker 1: we we weren't really looking at uh Land air mass
Speaker 1: and the intricacies between them in the ocean to figure
Speaker 1: out how the environment was sort of doing this tango
Speaker 1: with these different elements. Yeah. You know again, you you
Speaker 1: in science, you learn from your missteps as well as
Speaker 1: as your successes. And this was such an enormous project
Speaker 1: with such an enormous um you know, reach that that
Speaker 1: that you end up with having all these lessons that
Speaker 1: pop up, and you know, they just had not occurred
Speaker 1: before because no one had dried something like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Chandler says that, um, you know, no one, no
Speaker 1: one had ever really essentially made a giant test tube
Speaker 1: with full control of every variable. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: biosphere made complex natural systems more like chemistry and physics
Speaker 1: something researchers could experiment on instead of just observe, which
Speaker 1: is key. And it was also deciding that Biosphere two
Speaker 1: may not be much of a spaceship, but maybe it's
Speaker 1: a bit of a time machine. Yeah, because you can
Speaker 1: go back and you can look at the data on
Speaker 1: the carbon cycles and see the areas areas in which
Speaker 1: scientists can better understand interactions between chemical elements and the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to carbon fluctuations and tree canopies.
Speaker 1: Because consider this, even though a single carbon atom might
Speaker 1: cycle in a few weeks or years on planet Earth,
Speaker 1: decades may pass before say a rainforest in Brazil effects
Speaker 1: say a farm in Iowa. But in biosphere too, these
Speaker 1: kind of conditions can be studied at a much more
Speaker 1: rapid pace. So the same carbon cycle would take just
Speaker 1: three days before one biome was affected by another. That's amazing, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And again studying the world in small to better understand
Speaker 1: the world at large. Alright, let's tick through some of
Speaker 1: these findings that came out of Biosphere too, and also
Speaker 1: kind of maybe accidental findings, you know, I mean, some
Speaker 1: of them obviously were done in earnest, but a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff reminds me of Stephen Johnson when he
Speaker 1: talks about innovations and how they will spiral out and
Speaker 1: and no one can really predict how one innovation can
Speaker 1: come in and affect everything else exactly exactly. So one
Speaker 1: thing that we learned here again we mentioned that that
Speaker 1: fabulous ocean environment meant to mimic the Caribbean with coral reefs.
Speaker 1: What we learned that orl reefs are salvageable. Marine biologist
Speaker 1: Guy ailing Us oversaw the artificial reach and reef and
Speaker 1: again this was the largest ever constructed um and in
Speaker 1: the process she learned lessons from managing ecologically stressed reefs
Speaker 1: in the real world. You know, these are environments where
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're they're continually suffering from fishing, from dumping,
Speaker 1: from diving, uh adventures that are damaging the fragile ecosystem
Speaker 1: of the reef. So we're able to to to to
Speaker 1: learn how to say of our actual reefs by studying
Speaker 1: them within biosphere too. Yeah, and uh again. David L. Chandler,
Speaker 1: writing for Wired, says that complexity is not maybe as well.
Speaker 1: He says, complexity is no obstacle, but I would say
Speaker 1: it's maybe not as much as an obstacle. Biosphere two
Speaker 1: does have a lesson of complexity. As an obstacle, it does.
Speaker 1: It does that the things will collapse. But he says
Speaker 1: the point here is that while some species died out
Speaker 1: bees for example, of course we know it's important for pollination.
Speaker 1: He says, the system balanced itself remarkably well. And we
Speaker 1: have seen that too when we looked at some of
Speaker 1: the rewilding studies. Yeah, I mean they say nature finds
Speaker 1: a way, right, and uh, but one of the big
Speaker 1: concerns for humanity is will nature find a way without us?
Speaker 1: All right? Another big lesson is that massive spacecraft will
Speaker 1: hold their air again. Space was very much on the
Speaker 1: minds of the designers of Biosphere too, and and on
Speaker 1: the minds of those that ended up occupying it for
Speaker 1: those two years. And the project was one of the
Speaker 1: largest seal structures ever built, and yet the overall air
Speaker 1: leakage rate was less than ten per per year. The
Speaker 1: big tay home, of course, was do not use concrete
Speaker 1: when making your spaceship, because it ends up sucking up
Speaker 1: that CEO two, which the plants need to produce oxygen,
Speaker 1: which the humans need to stay alive. Another finding human
Speaker 1: beings can eat less. Well, we know that already, but
Speaker 1: the point year is that Roy Walford, who conducted the
Speaker 1: first reliable long term experiment on caloric restriction in biospheriens,
Speaker 1: found that they got the nutrition that they needed with
Speaker 1: less food, really, and they emerged with improvements and blood pressure,
Speaker 1: cholesterol level and other health indicators. Okay, they might have
Speaker 1: become overly obsessed with food and a bit depressed, but hey,
Speaker 1: they did they survived. Another big one is that waste
Speaker 1: can be recycled. So again for two years, they're all
Speaker 1: in there, they're producing waste as well as waste from
Speaker 1: the goats the chickens, and they're recycling all of this
Speaker 1: through natural, low tech filtration methods. So the work that
Speaker 1: was that was done in biosphere two along these lines
Speaker 1: was pioneering and it led to a number of very
Speaker 1: successful subsurface water treatment systems that are now used in
Speaker 1: Mexico and other developing countries. Also worth noting that you
Speaker 1: look back on how they were recycling their sewage uh
Speaker 1: and uh and and and you know, and then re
Speaker 1: drinking it once it was purified, purifying it through plants,
Speaker 1: soil atmosphere machines, they were doing this back then, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until eighteen late eighteen years later in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine that NASA announced total water recycling on the
Speaker 1: International Space Station. Now, you know it's not necessarily one
Speaker 1: to one on that scale. But again coming back to
Speaker 1: that comparison between the the synergist powered UH movement that
Speaker 1: leads to biosphere too and the more controlled environment of
Speaker 1: say NASA. Now, one of the rarest microbes ever found
Speaker 1: was discovered in the waters of the Biosphere Ocean, and
Speaker 1: this amiba is called you Hyperamiba Biospherica, and it thrived
Speaker 1: because there was an absence of natural predators. So the
Speaker 1: lesson here is that even though you might have really
Speaker 1: strict biological controls in place, you just don't know what
Speaker 1: is going to show up. That's kind of the beauty
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, you have this contained environment with any
Speaker 1: you don't know how all the variable is going to
Speaker 1: shake up, so you might end up essentially with a
Speaker 1: stowaway UM. Another big take home here is that sealed
Speaker 1: ecosystems have a future. UM Biosphere projects found a number
Speaker 1: of imitators, each with its different spin. There was the
Speaker 1: verstance the Zurich Zoo reproduced a pet of the piece
Speaker 1: of the Madagascar rainforest. The Biosphere Foundation, which can is
Speaker 1: actually uh contains some of the Biosphere team are currently
Speaker 1: planet planning to build a simulated habitats for prospective Mars colonist.
Speaker 1: Because again, the individuals involved in in Biosphere Too, they
Speaker 1: didn't just there. It's not like their spirits were all
Speaker 1: crushed and they said, all right, I guess I'll just
Speaker 1: be a banker. I guess I'll just get hardware store now.
Speaker 1: They for the most right, they all remained within the
Speaker 1: fields that brought them to Biosphere too, and continue to
Speaker 1: work with some of those synergist ideals in their minds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you want more information on the biospheres and
Speaker 1: the future of them in terms of space exploration, I
Speaker 1: know that tech stuff goes into this topic a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper to try to figure out like what stuff
Speaker 1: was actually viable can that you can take from Biosphere
Speaker 1: two and some of the nineties six season seventies Biosphere
Speaker 1: experiments from Russian and American scientists and what did they
Speaker 1: learn from that? So check that out if you're interested.
Speaker 1: I also wanted to point out that Jane Pointner, she
Speaker 1: she emerged as the lead scientists. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: she was the only degreed scientists um among the biospherians. She,
Speaker 1: along with her husband Tabor McCallum, and their company Paragon
Speaker 1: Space Development, has had experiments flown on the International Space Station,
Speaker 1: the Russian mir Space Station, and the US Space Shuttle,
Speaker 1: as well as working on underwater technologies with the US Navy.
Speaker 1: And she's also worked on projects to mitigate climate change
Speaker 1: and grow crops and um some typically arid and hostile
Speaker 1: regions of Africa and Central Africa. So so as you
Speaker 1: have mentioned, these are people who are passionate about not
Speaker 1: just the project but their respective fields. All right, So
Speaker 1: there you have it, our two parter on Biosphere two.
Speaker 1: And I really hope here at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, now that you've you've given this topic of
Speaker 1: chance and then really, you know, let us chat into
Speaker 1: your ear for a while about it, that you have
Speaker 1: a new respect for what they set out to accomplish,
Speaker 1: for some of the ideas going into it, and ultimately
Speaker 1: what we end up gaining from Biosphere too, that it
Speaker 1: wasn't just one of these sort of v H one
Speaker 1: remember the nineties missteps. It was it was more than
Speaker 1: just a footnote in the in the cultural history of America.
Speaker 1: Yeah that if previous to listening to this, your only
Speaker 1: reference to this was Polychhore's Biodome. We hope that has
Speaker 1: now been replaced with this, this amazing, ambitious, um really
Speaker 1: innovative project that that should get its due for the
Speaker 1: impact that it's had on this scientific community. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: and really should be. I feel like it should have.
Speaker 1: It should be inspiring more and more products. There should be.
Speaker 1: It's a story that should have influence a fiction more.
Speaker 1: We should have, you know, more fictionalized accounts of of
Speaker 1: of what this consistent of it should have influenced our
Speaker 1: science fiction and and even horror more. I see shades
Speaker 1: of it here and there, but not not the profound
Speaker 1: impact it feels like it should have had. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: cannot believe that there's not a full scale documentary on this,
Speaker 1: and I can't believe that more of the Biospherians haven't
Speaker 1: talked about their experience beyond Jane Poytner, because this is
Speaker 1: really a window into an amazing time and it has
Speaker 1: all of the elements I think that that make it
Speaker 1: a fascinating story. I mean you've got the cult angle
Speaker 1: to it, you have science, you have this science fiction angle,
Speaker 1: you have this idea of terror forming and and then
Speaker 1: you've got the psychological component that and I don't know
Speaker 1: if we've mentioned this yet, that inspired the TV series
Speaker 1: Big Brother. Yeah, yeah, so in that respect it certainly
Speaker 1: had a pop cultural residence. But but but yeah, like
Speaker 1: why has uh? You know, the sign antologists and l
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard have seen their their altered form takes cinematic
Speaker 1: shape in the Master. Why not the sentergis, the synergis
Speaker 1: are far more interesting and far more beneficial to h
Speaker 1: to human culture. In my opinion, I dare say fun loving, yes,
Speaker 1: fun loving to our science loving Alright, so you have
Speaker 1: once again thank you for listening. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com because that's
Speaker 1: where you'll find all the podcast episodes, blog post videos,
Speaker 1: as well as a cool image gallery of biosphere too.
Speaker 1: So if you really need some images to go along
Speaker 1: with what you've heard here, check that out and those
Speaker 1: those images will take you to a different time, a
Speaker 1: different place, and a different spirit. And if you have
Speaker 1: thoughts on this, you can send them to blow the mind.
Speaker 1: How Stuff forward Stockholm for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it, How stuff works dot com