no to mention i stuck out like a sore thumb.
I don't think it helped when i pretended to be a pro wrestler in the target dressing room..
when I was on the train with my baby sister Kara to Arizona I was worried the moment I stepped off the platform I would be linched by a mob of Mexican immigrant hating Nazis,
that my brave white sister would have to save me in a way that involves jumping out a stained glass window and a song playing by Muse.
(this really happened..)
the first few days in Arizona was dryer and hotter then anyone could imagine fallowed by a monsoon and lightning storms plus tornado... the sky was AMAZING!
before I made it to the Biosphere2 I took in the culture and the sites never witnessed before.. Like Walmart.
then we biosphere'ed 2 the shit out of the place!!
for those of you that don't know what the Biosphere is-
the Biosphere 2 is a 3.15-acre (12,700 m2)[1] structure originally built to be an artificial, materially-closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona (USA) by Space Biosphere Ventures, a joint venture whose principal officers were John P. Allen, inventor and Executive Director, and Margret Augustine, CEO. Constructed between 1987 and 1991, it was used to explore the complex web of interactions within life systems in a structure that included five areas based on natural biomes and an agricultural area and human living/working space to study the interactions between humans, farming and technology with the rest of nature.[2] It also explored the possible use of closed biospheres in space colonization, and allowed the study and manipulation of a biosphere without harming Earth's. The name comes from Earth’s biosphere, Biosphere 1, Earth's life system is the only biosphere currently known. Funding for the project came primarily from the joint venture’s financial partner, Ed Bass' Decisions Investment, and cost $200 million from 1985 to 2007, including land, support research greenhouses, test module and staff facilities.
I F'n cut my hair just to see this awesome place!
Everyone thinks I'm a terrorist!
they say the people in the study here were so Bord they jumped off the top of the sphere and dove into the artificial ocean for fun.. I don't think i could ever get that Bord...because i know I'd die from being to much of a butterfinger:P
the less impressive artificial dessert in the dessert:P
artificial "cave".
As Biosphere 2 is a self contained and airtight structure the air inside would expand and contract on warm and cold days which could cause the building to explode or implode!
During the first mission, the oxygen inside the facility, which began at 20.9%, fell at a steady pace and after 16 months was down to 14.5%. This is equivalent to the oxygen availability at an elevation of 4,080 meters (13,400 ft).[17] Since some biospherians were starting to have symptoms like sleep apnea and fatigue, Walford and the medical team decided to boost oxygen with injections in January and August 1993.
Daily fluctuation of carbon dioxide dynamics was typically 600 ppm because of the strong drawdown during sunlight hours by plant photosynthesis, followed by a similar rise during the nighttime when system respiration dominated. As expected, there was also a strong seasonal signature to CO2 levels, with wintertime levels as high as 4,000-4,500 and summertime levels near 1,000 ppm. The crew worked to manage the CO2 by occasionally turning on a CO2 scrubber, activating and de-activating the desert and savannah through control of irrigation water, cutting and storing biomass to sequester carbon, and utilizing all potential planting areas with fast-growing species to increase system photosynthesis.[18]
Many suspected the drop in oxygen was due to microbes in the soil. The soils were selected to have enough carbon to provide for the plants of the ecosystems to grow from infancy to maturity, a plant mass increase of perhaps 20 tons (18,000 kg).[19] The release rate of that soil carbon as carbon dioxide by respiration of soil microbes was an unknown that the Biosphere 2 experiment was designed to reveal. El Nino weather systems blocked necessary sunlight resulting in lower oxygen production.
The respiration rate was faster than the photosynthesis (possibly in part due to relatively low light penetration through the glazed structure) resulting in a slow decrease of oxygen. A mystery accompanied the oxygen decline: the corresponding increase in carbon dioxide did not appear. This concealed the underlying process until an investigation by Jeff Severinghaus and Wallace Broecker of Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory using isotopic analysis showed that carbon dioxide was reacting with exposed concrete inside Biosphere 2 to form calcium carbonate, thereby sequestering the carbon dioxide and, as part of it, the oxygen that had disappeared.[20]
The discovery of the small difference between rate of respiration and rate of photosynthesis depended on the extremely low leak rate of Biosphere 2. It was shown by Dempster that had Biosphere 2 leaked as much as other closed ecological test chambers, the wash-out effect of outside air mixing in would have concealed the entire imbalance.
rain forest, after a while i started to feel sick from walking threw several different Eco systems all in one day, i wish they kept the animals in it but the only thing i found were tiny snails<3 src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs891.snc4/72461_159303457426516_100000405896831_372153_2499336_n.jpg">
I'm starting to think my face is resembling Rita Repulsa little by little.
ocean
after a day of science and learning about the world and the way it works we did what any 20-somthing girls would do...we pretended to hump displays and point out what looks like a penis or vagina along with fart jokes :)
the day was still young when we left the sphere so Kara and I celebrated Science with fake sideburns, bumble bee diddlybobs and a two for one piercing special in Tucson!
next thing we know Kara was challenged to a dance off!! by some drunk guy.
the guy said he knew a dance that "was like a rose blooming on a mountain side in the rain .......in France"
he then proceed to knock his knees together while he swing his arm like he was rolling up a car window..
after he won the dance off with that little number he whispered into my ear
"I don't trust that guy... his sideburns are fake.."
and that man was the highlight of our Tuscon adventure...and i now have a nose screw in my nostril to remember it by
......the end ....
