Editor’s note: This is the first part in a two-part series detailing developments in the UA’s operation of Biosphere 2. The UA looks to tackle “”grand challenges”” and inform the public about science ...

Last month, when John Druitt prepared to seal himself off for a year inside a huge glass dome in the Arizona desert, there was no shortage of people wondering about his sanity, including himself. He ...

An international team of researchers has descended on University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, sealing off the complex’s rain forest, to conduct a one-of-a-kind study examining the impact of droughts on ...

Biosphere 2 was a highly ambitious experiment to simulate a self-sustaining Mars colony in the Arizona desert. Eight men and women locked themselves inside for 2 years and experienced one incredible ...

ORACLE, Ariz. — Plopped in the Sonoran Desert, just outside Tucson, Ariz., sits a massive, multilevel greenhouse that's probably best known as the inspiration for a Pauly Shore movie. A slick, stepped ...

Biosphere 2, a facility dedicated to the research and understanding of global scientific issues, is reopening. A bunch of scientists won't live in it this time. Instead the new owners of the Biosphere ...

2005-02-20 04:00:00 PDT Oracle, Ariz.-- It was a New Age garden of Eden, hermetically sealed under glass in the Arizona desert. It was a glimpse into the far-distant future, a taste of what life might ...

ORACLE, Ariz. — Walking through the air lock of Biosphere 2, I was grateful that the two thick steel doors didn’t slam shut behind me. Unlike the research facility’s original occupants, who were ...

ORACLE, Ariz. – They lived for two years and 20 minutes under the glass of a miniature Earth, complete with an ocean, rain forest, desert, grasslands and mangroves. Their air and water were recycled, ...

Jane Poynter and seven compatriots agreed to spend two years sealed inside a 3-acre terrarium in the Sonoran Desert. Their mission back in the 1990s: To see whether humans might someday be able to ...