8 people were locked in a dome for 2 years for an experiment in 1991. The result was beyond imagination

The creators of the dome hoped to create similar glasshouses on the Moon or Mars if the experiment would have turned out to be successful.

On September 26, 1991, four men and four women, wearing bulky jumpsuits that resembled spacesuits, hiked to the foothills of Arizona’s Santa Catalina Mountains and reached a ziggurat glasshouse known as “Biosphere 2.” These individuals were participants in an experiment that people now remember as something “stranger than fiction.” By the end, the “biosphereians” ended up going mad. This ultimate lockdown and social-distancing experiment was stamped as a failure, yet it continues to teach noteworthy lessons about how to manage Biosphere 1 – the Earth, reported The New York Times.

The idea first took shape in the mind of a man named John Allen while he was sitting on a Mexican ranch with some of his fellows in the 1970s. They decided to merge ecology with technology and create a structure that would mimic a pseudo-scientific greenhouse on another planet. Their goal was to create an artificial environment that would imitate life on Earth, so building this type of airtight environment on Mars or the Moon would enable advanced exploration for scientists. In 1984, they announced their plan and it instantly stirred nationwide curiosity. People and media were eager to see how the experiment would turn out. Even experts commented on it saying it was “the most significant scientific project of all time,” and it could “save the world.”

Over the next few years, they turned the desert ranch into a looming monument sprawling with enormous glass globes and pyramids that contained artificial oxygen, laboratories, rainforests, recycling systems, coral reef, and 3,800 species of plants and animals like pigs, chickens, bush babies, and hummingbirds. They were meant to grow food inside this ecosystem, and wastewater was meant to be recycled by the soil, where microbes would trap the bacteria and release purified water for the inmates. The team building this extraordinary ecosystem garnered support from a Texan oil billionaire Ed Bass, who became the chairman of the company “Space Biospheres Ventures.”

An evening before the mission, the team hosted a raunchy dance party inviting thousands of people to celebrate. On the following day, as eight people stepped inside the majestic glasshouse, they became media sensations. If this experiment turned out to be successful, Allen and his team hoped to build similar glasshouse biospheres on extra-terrestrial habitats like the Moon and Mars. It’d be a revolutionary progress in the field of science and technology. However, as days went by, the news seeping from the glasshouse was far from pleasant.

Representative Image Source: Pexels | Yankrukov
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Yankrukov

Within just a few days, a major problem emerged – food. Most food crops inside the glasshouse grew either too slowly or required too much labor. Although they had a lot of beetroot and sweet potato, just one cup of coffee took a fortnight to grow. Inhabitants were quickly losing weight due to calorie deprivation. Plus, two weeks into the experiment, a woman cut her finger while cooking. She went out to get her injury treated. When she returned, she was carrying duffel bags with supplies of things like computer parts and color films.

Growing food wasn’t the only challenge they were facing. The oxygen levels in the ecosystem were also declining rapidly, with carbon dioxide building up simultaneously. Earth’s atmosphere is about 21% oxygen, but inside the biosphere, it fell to 14.2%, per The Guardian. The members felt as if they were living at 14,000 feet. Soon enough, a truck arrived secretly and delivered fresh stocks of food and oxygen. The individuals were overjoyed.

Mark Nelson, who was among the eight-person crew, told HISTORY that things were going well up until this time. The Biospherians celebrated Thanksgiving with a feast of chicken, baked squash, and sweet potato pie, and toasted the winter solstice with rice wine. There was a lot of privacy, too, in case anyone needed it. They could slip inside one of the glass domes and be by themselves for as long as they wanted.

But as winters set in, clouds covered the sky and crops started deteriorating due to low oxygen. Hummingbirds and honeybees started dying while populations of ants and cockroaches began to explode. Soon, the atmosphere inside the glasshouse started to become hostile. Adding to the stress resulting from the swarms of people who hoarded in front of the geodesic dome to snap pictures of the inmates, as if they were captives, quarrels began to erupt among housemates themselves. People began to spit and throw cups at each other, reported The Guardian. But they survived. After this mission, a second Biosphere-2 mission was also organized in 1994, but it also ended up as a failure just after five months.

Representative Image Source: Pexels | NC Farm Bureau Mark
Representative Image Source: Pexels | NC Farm Bureau Mark

Fast forward to today, the eccentric episode of “Biosphere 2 experiment” might look like a fraud or failure, but it has important lessons to teach humanity about managing the ecosystem of planet Earth. The idea of an artificial biosphere is potentially plausible and could always be re-maneuvered for cosmonauts and astronauts in the future. But as for now, a 2021 documentary called “Spaceship Earth” captures the story of the eight-people experiment showing glimpses into some of the sinister scenes that unfolded inside the glasshouse that is now seen as a science research laboratory. 

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