Friday, February 20, 2009

A look at Biosphere 2

Yesterday 2/19/2009 we thought we could do a trip to The Biosphere & Mt. Lemmon. But the trip to the Biosphere took most of the day. We have herd people say that it wasn’t worth the trip but we enjoyed it. It’s an amazing look @ earth science & today is being used & managed by the University of Arizona. Not sure we would have paid $40 to go see it but we have a Tucson pass book so it was only $20.  

There is no public money being used for this project. It was all built with private money. Located off Oracle Road (Hwy-77) at mile post 96.5 20 minutes north on Tucson & 90 minutes south of Phoenix. Click on the Pix to see bigger.

   P1000462 P1000463

The tour started in the area of the kitchen used by the first group of people 4 men & 4 women (non married) they lived in this controlled environment for 2 yrs & 20 minutes. There was another small group that lived in the Biosphere for 6 months. We then entered into the Tropical Savannah that was so humid it was next to impossible to get pix as your lenses & glasses fogged up. Next stop the desert.

P1000473 P1000475

Next stop the Ocean.They trucked in 1 million Gallons of Ocean water from San Diego in Milk trucks to have pure Ocean water for the environment.

 P1000477 DSC_0104-1 DSC_0114 DSC_0117

The tropical Rain Forest

 P1000479 P1000480

The basement that makes it all work. Wonder if this is what it looks like deep in the earth??

DSC_0122 DSC_0124DSC_0125

Then there is the lungs. There are 2 big round domes. They now think it could all have been ok with just 1 dome.There is a big huge rubber balloon type membrane inside the dome with a large mettle disk that goes up & down with the heat & cold outside. You really need to be there to see this.

DSC_0128  DSC_0129 DSC_0130 DSC_0131

The outside.

DSC_0133  DSC_0136 DSC_0145 DSC_0103-1 DSC_0146 P1000465

The woman giving the tour gave 2 things we might like to google one was Mangrove restorations & Waste Water Garden The later having to do with septic type systems. And the book The Human Experiment by Jane Poynter.

To read more about the Biosphere 2 you can go http://www.B2science.org

No comments:

Post a Comment