BIO-DOMES

Ever wondered what cool sciencey stuff they are teaching undergraduates at the University of Queensland?

 Every school day I will post my newly learned cool fact... Enjoy

18/03/2013

BIOLOGY

BIO-DOMES

The environment that we live in is like a giant life support system.

It cleans our water, 

  

It cleans our air,

It provides us with food 

It provides us with all of the materials we need to build our homes and develop our lives.

Scientists have attempted to research this for years, and we have made great strides forward in understanding how this systems and cycles work.

Yet interestingly we are yet to create a truly self-sustaining system.

For many years NASA has been trying to build Bio-Domes.

Bio Domes are a concept creation where they are sealed areas except for light.

So for example Bio Domes are kind of like green houses.

They let light in, but they are sealed from anything else coming into or out of the dome.

It is an experiment to see if science has enough of an understanding of the laws of nature to create an area that can support human life.

Only problem is that so far they have been met with failure after failure. 

From concrete walls absorbing oxygen, to irrigation systems not creating a proper water cycle, all bio domes at this point have not been successful.

Research into this concept continues to this day and we are starting to get some successes in this field.

But if there is one situation that clearly shows how little we know about our natural world, it has to be that we can’t even replicate it when we are given every building block.