Chapter 48 9.4 Cyclotrons for life sciences

Just below the biosphere's grasslands, forests, farms, and biosphere dwellers hides another face of Bio2: the mechanical "technosphere." The Technosphere exists precisely to assist Bio2 in its "emergence."In several places in this wilderness, spiral staircases lead down to cavernous basements filled with equipment.There are arm-thick, color-coded pipes that wind their way along the wall for fifty miles.There is also the huge ductwork in the movie "Brazil", miles of electronic wiring, workshops full of heavy tools, corridors crowded with threshing machines and milling machines; spare parts racks, switch boxes, instrument panels, vacuum blowers. , more than two hundred motors, one hundred water pumps, and sixty fans.It looks like the interior of a submarine, or the back of a skyscraper.The site is occupied by industrial "ruins".

The technosphere supports the biosphere.Huge blowers circulate Bio2's air several times a day; heavy pumps pump out rainwater; motors for wave machines run day and night; machines hum.This unabashed machine world is not outside Bio2, but inside its flesh, like bone or cartilage, an integral part of a larger organism. For example, Bio2's coral reefs couldn't survive without the basement containing the algae cleaners.The cleaner is a table-sized shallow plastic dish covered in algae.The room is illuminated by halogen sun lamps, the same ones used to illuminate the artificial coral reef in the exhibition hall.In fact, the cleaners are like the mechanical kidneys of the coral reefs in Bio2.They function similarly to pond filters in purifying water.Algae consume the waste excreted by the reef, and they multiply into a sticky green blanket under intense artificial sunlight.Green sticky strands can quickly clog the cleaner.Like a pool or fish tank filter that needs to be scraped clean every ten days by some hapless guy, that's another job for those eight guys.Cleaning the algae cleaners (which become fertilizer) is the least thankful job in Bio2.

The nerve center of the entire system is the computer control room of Biosphere 2, and the "artificial cerebral cortex" that presides over the work is constructed from surrounding wires, integrated circuit chips, and sensors.A software network simulated every valve, every pipe, every motor in the facility.Any disturbance in the Ark—whether natural or artificial—seldom escaped the perception of the distributed computer.Bio2 is like a connected monster.Around a hundred chemical constituents in the air, soil and water are continuously measured.Bio2's governing body, SBV, is banking on a potentially lucrative technology spun out of the project -- sophisticated environmental monitoring.

Mark Nelson said that Bio2 was a "marriage of ecology and technology," and he was right.That's the beauty of Bio2 - it's a great example of eco-technology, a symbiosis of nature and technology.We don't know much about building biomes without pumps installed, but with the pumps in place we were able to try to set up the system and learn from it. To a large extent, this is a process of learning new control mechanisms.Tony Boggs said, "NASA is pursuing the optimization of resource use. They select wheat and optimize the production environment of wheat. But the problem is that when you put a large number of species together, you can't separate them. Optimizing each species, you can only optimize the whole. If you optimize sequentially, you become dependent on engineering controls. SBV hopes to replace engineering controls with ecological controls, which will eventually reduce costs. You may lose the production process Some of the optimality in it, but freed from the dependence on technology."

Bio2 is a gigantic flask for ecological experiments that require more control over the environment than field experiments can (or should) do.We can study individual lives in the laboratory.But to observe ecological life and biosphere life requires a much larger space.In Bio2, we can introduce or remove a single species with a high degree of confidence that the others will not be changed—all because the space is large enough to produce something "ecological".John Allen said: "Biosphere 2 is the cyclotron of life sciences." Maybe Bio2 is really a better Noah's Ark, a futuristic zoo in a big cage.There, everything, including the self-appointed Homo sapiens observer, can run its course.Species are free to co-evolve with other species to any possible outcome.

Meanwhile, those dreaming of mastering space see Bio2 as a pragmatic step away from Earth's galactic journey.From the perspective of space technology, Biosphere 2 is the most impressive development since the moon landing.NASA not only sneered at this at the concept stage, but also refused to help it from beginning to end.In the end they had to swallow the bitter pill of arrogance and admit that the experiment had paid off.Runaway biology has its place. All these meanings are actually declarations of some kind of evolution.Dorian Sagan described this brilliantly in his book "The Biosphere":

Yes, humans were involved in the replication, but weren't insects involved in the replication of flowers?The living Earth now relies on us and our engineering skills to complete its reproduction, but this does not negate that the biosphere ostensibly built for humans actually represents the replication of biological systems on a planetary scale... What counts as definite success?Eight people living in it for two years?So what about a decade, or a century?In fact, the resurgence of the biosphere—the habitat that internally recycles and recreates everything human life requires—opens up something whose outcome we cannot predict.

When everything is running smoothly and there is time to fantasize freely, biosphere people can think about where this system is going?What's next?An Antarctic Biosphere 2 oasis?Or a bigger Bio2 with more bugs, birds and berries?Perhaps the most intriguing question is: How small can Bio2 really be?The Japanese, masters of miniaturization, are obsessed with Bio2.A Japanese poll showed that more than 50% of the population approved of the experiment.For those who live in claustrophobic quarters and isolated islands, the tiny Bio2 seems to have a lot of charm.In fact, a government department in Japan has announced a plan for Biosphere J.According to them, this "J" does not represent Japan, it represents Junior, which means smaller.The official sketch shows a courtyard of individual rooms, illuminated by artificial light sources, packed with compact ecosystems.

The ecotechnologists who built Bio2 have figured out some basic tricks.They know how to seal glass, how to alternately grow crops in a very small area, how to recycle their own waste, how to balance the atmosphere, how to adapt to paperless life, and how to live in harmony in it.This is a great start for any size biosphere.In the future, there will be Bio2s of all sizes and types, which can accommodate various combinations of species.Mark Nelson told me: "In the future, the biosphere will spread in countless directions." And he believes that biospheres of different sizes and combinations are like different species, fighting for the expansion of the territory, for the Combined by sharing genes, they interbreed as biological organisms.They will make their homes on the planet.Every city on earth should also have a biosphere for experimentation and teaching.