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A Sealed Garden That Was Watered Once in 53 Years (2017)
- Nanocurrency 7y agoDefinitely adding this to my DIY list. I need to build myself a terrarium now!
- pvaldes 7y agoIs not so easy and stable as you could think. The trick there is in the species, that is a survivor, clonates itself from tiny fragments and is invasive.
- hairytrog 7y agoI'm thinking we each make our own little ecosystem, maybe a half an acre would be enough. Maybe make it double walled, just in case, and then say screw it to everyone else as climate change and various other big things occur on the outside.
- p1necone 7y agoThe gun turrets on the roof that keep away the roaming marauders need to be self sustaining too.
- ralphstodomingo 7y agoWe can make a supply chain that runs through these double walls underground, passing ammunition and other stuff.
- sasaf5 7y agoMaybe lasers then?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoWhat if the optics get damaged? What lasing medium are you using and what if it leaks? For long-term defense systems, I'd try to go as low-tech as possible. Every bit of technology of the past 300 years is tied to a rather large manufacturing & supply chain. If your turret has μC in it, where will you get a new one if the marauders happen to score a lucky shot?
- colechristensen 7y agoYou can reshape the question into how small could you make a microcontroller fabricator which can produce all of the electronics within itself? One square mile to one square foot - it seems likely that the best possible is within that range. How well could it be optimized?
- saagarjha 7y agoTake a leaf from the book of Plants vs. Zombies and grow your own defense system!
- stephen_g 7y agoIt would get too hot in most places, I think. Glass, especially if double walled, stops the heat getting out, but most of the heat from the sun will be able to get in (as infra-red). So you'd need supporting systems (i.e. air conditioning) outside.
- p1necone 7y agoLocal warming is a myth, the dome is just going through a natural cycle of warming and cooling!
- klingonopera 7y agoAFAIK, at a certain depth below ground-level, the temperature is constant all-year-round. Something like that in two meters the ground is constantly around 14°C or something like that. ...so basically all you'd need to do is just dig a hole, put a bunch of metal pipes inside, seal it all up and run cooling water through and couple it to a closed-loop temperature control and you're done. The idea is from an article from overclockers.com from the mid-2000s, about a dude who built his own water-cooling system and wanted a more efficient radiator. Not sure if I can find it again...
- nitrogen 7y agoOr just use a commercially available heat pump.
- pdpi 7y agoThat only works for a limited amount of time though. E.g. the London tube has warmed the rock around it by a very considerable amount. https://www.citymetric.com/transport/londons-tube-has-been-running-so-long-its-literally-raising-temperature-earth-around-it https://www.citymetric.com/transport/londons-tube-has-been-r...
- nkrisc 7y agoIf you're talking about a half acre biodome, your "limited amount of time" is probably longer than the life of the planet.
- blackflame7000 7y agoThe movie Biodome comes to mind here.
- pugworthy 7y agoHave you ever watched Silent Running?
- koolba 7y agoHave you ever watched Biodome?
- pugworthy 7y agoMovies from 1972 vs 1996? I'll take the ecological classic that is a bit more in line with the OC's post. Silent Running was very much an ecological and social statement about humanity and the Earth. I cried when Lewie was gone, and felt bad for Dewey.
- Angostura 7y agoI remember blubbing as a kid when I first watched silent running - for the same reasons.
- kwhitefoot 7y agoWas probably in my early twenties when I saw it first, saw it again twenty years later, still had the same impact. Let's hope it won't be needed.
- boomlinde 7y agoI was impressed with their movement and long after seeing the film for the first time learned that they were played by double amputee actors
- wongarsu 7y agoYou might be interested in Biosphere 2 [1], a 3 acre hermetically sealed dome stucture designed to house about 8 people with an ecosystem to provide them with everything they need to survive. They didn't quite get oxygen and food production to the required level, but if you add another acre or so it should work. With renewed interest in moon and mars colonies somebody is bound to revive that line of research. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
- zeristor 7y agoThe first experiment was hampered by them not realising the cement needed CO2 to cure, to be honest I would have halted the experiment to find out what the issue was then restarted it. Although they might not have realised this at the time, but then they weren't really testing a proper closed system. It would have been useful if they were able to test a closed system without the cement sucking up the CO2.
- tgb 7y agoIsn't cement a major CO2 emitter?
- ch4s3 7y agoThe production of cement is, but curing cement fixes CO2. It just doesn't fix enough to offset the production.
- PorterDuff 7y agoOn the restarting, I completely agree. You'd need to restart the whole thing multiple times as your knowledge increased. Maybe somebody else is doing large scale closed system human habitats, but I haven't heard of any. edit: A bit of googling led me to the Russian one and some books on the problem generally. It sounds like a great speciality but probably hard to get a gig in. If I had a multi-decade old terrarium, I'd be darn tempted to think of sensors you could stick in there and see if there's some sort of cycle going on.
- 7y ago
- m-i-l 7y agoI've a vague fantasy about returning to the remote Scottish island where I was born, which is pretty windswept with almost no trees, and building a house and garden inside a large Solar Dome, growing trees and plants that otherwise wouldn't survive in such a hostile environment. Apparently it has been done to some extent[0]. Side note - they discovered in the Biosphere 2 that trees need some wind, because the stress helps form reaction wood to strengthen the tree[1]. [0] http://www.solardome.co.uk/case-study/the-nature-house-north-norway/ http://www.solardome.co.uk/case-study/the-nature-house-north... [1] http://awesci.com/the-role-of-wind-in-a-trees-life/ http://awesci.com/the-role-of-wind-in-a-trees-life/
- libria 7y ago[2017]
- dang 7y agoThanks! Added.
- phillc73 7y agoAfter initial transportation failures, sealed terrariums were used by Robert Fortune to send stolen tea seedlings from China to India,[1] thus helping the British to break the nineteenth Century Chinese monopoly on tea production. [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00H9J1AM2/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00H9J1AM2/
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agoFunny wording to use "break" for IP theft, it looks different when the British do it compared to when the Chinese do it, doesn't it?
- lagadu 7y agoThe concept of IP didn't exist back then plus he did say the seeds were stolen.
- inflatableDodo 7y agoIn 1848? It most certainly did. First modern patent is probably the system in Florence in the 1400's, but versions of the concept date back to 500BC. First US patent was 1790.
- julienreszka 7y agoThere's a difference between ressources and IP.
- sudhirj 7y agoNot for cultured saplings. A plant growing in the forest is a resource, a carefully bred strain cultured over hundreds or thousands of years is nationalized IP.
- markdown 7y ago> a carefully bred strain cultured over hundreds or thousands of years is nationalized IP Is that just your opinion, or is there an internationally accepted legal framework around that? Could you perhaps post a link where I might learn more?
- audiometry 7y agoAre there any canonical guides to building a jar-rarium? Lots of crappy YouTube videos but nothing very thorough and complete.
- piqufoh 7y agoI've heard good things about this company https://botanicalboys.com/ https://botanicalboys.com/
- polyvisual 7y agoThis guy's youtube channel is a great resource for terrariums https://www.youtube.com/user/SerpaDesign https://www.youtube.com/user/SerpaDesign
- audiometry 7y agooh yeah, these are nice videos, just watched a few.
- Anonymous4C54D6 7y agoUnfortunately in German but still pretty easy to get some information out of and it has DIY guides: https://ulfsoltau.wordpress.com/ https://ulfsoltau.wordpress.com/
- vvdcect 7y agoThe video in the article is pretty good at explaining all you need to know on how to do it.
- pvaldes 7y agowhat is your climate?
- audiometry 7y agoI live in Singapore. high humidity, heat year-round and little change in sunglight:per day.
- bloudermilk 7y ago> In fact, more than a century has passed and David’s sealed bottle garden is still thriving and robust as can be. With thriving plant life, despite not watering it since 1972. "more than half a century" ?
- ghayes 7y agoThe original terrarium was constructed and sealed in 1960, according to the article, and only watered since then once, in 1972.
- nemasu 7y agoI'm still confused, a century is 100 years right? 1960 + 100 = 2060. Am I missing something?
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoright, which is what the parent comment was pointing out. The article says more than a century has passed, the parent comment says more than half a century with half emphasized to show that is what the article should obviously say.
- bjackman 7y agoI wonder if part of what makes it work is luck of the draw wrt. the microbial life that was present at the start. You need stuff that will break down the dead plants at a good enough rate but nothing that competes for resources or produces anything toxic to the plant. Or maybe that's a typical microbial makeup for sample of gardener's compost?
- comboy 7y agoNegative feedback loops?
- vvdcect 7y agoYeah I don't know if you noticed the white patch on the lower part of the terrarium, that to me looks like a mix of the plants root system and mycorrhizal fungi, so there should have been microbes present within the soil when it was first planted.
- jandrese 7y agoThere would have to be microbes in the soil breaking it down and releasing CO2 so the plant could get its carbon.
- psadri 7y agoI tried this myself and can attest that it worked for at least one year. I basically grabbed some dirt + a ground cover type plant + some water and sealed it in a large glass bottle (1 gallon glass milk jugs work too). So I don’t think you have to be that lucky.
- oftenwrong 7y agoCan plants be used to clean pollutants from the atmosphere in a space station? Maybe not: https://www.gardenmyths.com/garden-myth-born-plants-dont-purify-air/ https://www.gardenmyths.com/garden-myth-born-plants-dont-pur... https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/indoor-plants-clean-air-best-none-them/584509/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/indoor-p...
- nitrogen 7y agoIt seems like as a rough approximation your plants would need to grow at least as much biomass as you eat every day.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- chongli 7y agoYeah, so fast-growing lettuce, kale, herbs, radishes, carrots, peas, and green onions would be the order of the day.
- jacobush 7y ago"Space in space" is cramped only because we put up too small living quarters. But an inflatable balloon only for growing things in it need not be especially rigid or robust. It wouldn't even have to be rigidly fixed to the living quarters, it could float a bit to the side connected only by flexible tubing.
- Doubl 7y agoI wonder what other life forms are inside that jar apart from the plant. Is the tiny sealed world a paradise or a hell for them?
- Doubl 7y agoThey should call it the Sentinelese jar in honour of that equally green, sealed island
- vvdcect 7y agoIf the soil was taken from the garden there should be hexapods within it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springtail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springtail
- pavel_lishin 7y agoHm, hexapodia as the key insight?
- ansible 7y agoIs that a reference to A Fire Upon the Deep?
- jandrese 7y agoIt's just dirt to the microbes in there.
- yitchelle 7y agoIf there was a plant that is not green, would it have last as long? Just wondering if the photosynthesis is only exclusive to green plants.
- ainiriand 7y agoIt is not exclusive to green plants. You can see the cercis canadensis for example, not sure how it is done though.
- xixixao 7y agoWe made these at work couple years back, I have a nice red leafed plant in it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nw3yxphorc2h9v1/PHOTO-2019-04-26-17-21-26.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/nw3yxphorc2h9v1/PHOTO-2019-04-26-1... The only thing that almost killed it was direct sunlight, I think it got too hot and all the moisture was pulled out to the top.
- rolleiflex 7y agoThere is nothing specific about green. Chlorophyll A and Chlorophyll B have different absorption spectrums. Depending on the specific combination of those two, the plants can appear in a different colours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll#/media/File:Chlorophyll_ab_spectra-en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll#/media/File:Chloro... There are other pigments that cannot photosynthesise on their own, but can pass the energy to chlorophyll to react, as well. So while green usually means photosynthesis, absence of green does not mean absence thereof. https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss3/pigments.html https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss3/pigments.html
- YayamiOmate 7y agoWhat other plants are there? Photosynthesis is performed in/by chlorophyll which is green, so it's hard to not be green. There is a puprle earth hypothesis and Haloarchaea, which is based on witamin A related molecule for photosythesis, but those are not classified as plants. The current theory for inception of plants is that one cell captured another chlorophyllic one and created symbiotic organism, which later evolved into multicelluar plants. So by definition plants should be green for phototrophy ("feeding on light"), until it would somehow evolved chlorophyllic cells, but ot seems they are older than plantae themselves. Btw. similar theory exists for mitochondria and eukaryota, that's why we speak of my mitochondrial DNA.
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- MintChocoisEw 7y agothats crazy cool!!
- wallace_f 7y ago>more than a century has passed and David’s sealed bottle garden is still thriving and robust as can be. With thriving plant life, despite not watering it since 1972. >David planted the terrarium back in 1960 I'm so annoyed by the above. Is this article written in 2060?
- V-2 7y agoPretty sure they meant "more than half a century".
- chrismbarr 7y agoI also re-read this several times trying to make sense of it. I kept looking for a early 1900's date somewhere I must have missed...
- logfromblammo 7y ago> "The Sealed Garden That Was Only Watered Once in 53 Years" > "In 1960 David Latimer got curious and decided to plant a glass bottle with seed." > "Posted on March 22, 2017 by Davin" 1960 + 53 = 2013 They have apparently had 4 years to find and catch the "century" error prior to posting, and another 2 years since. I can't tell if there was any cheating, because the article does not specify how much compost was placed in the bottle initially, or its composition. So I can't estimate whether there's actually enough carbon or water in the bottle to support the visible amount of living plant mass. He should have measured the mass of the whole thing in 1960, and at least once per year thereafter, so he could show that the total mass remained the same.
- stcredzero 7y agoHe has the right look. Perhaps he's a Time Lord?
- chadcmulligan 7y agoAny one know what sort of jar that is? and/or where to buy one? Edit: its called a demijohn if anyone else was curious, used for making wine
- Insanity 7y agoThanks! I was curious about that myself. They seem quite pretty and a nice size for an 'experiment' like this.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoThey're also called, or very similar to, "carboys". Google says they're called "jimmy johns" in USA, but I've no knowledge of that.
- mohaine 7y agodemijohn are a bottle in a wicker wrapping. Once you get to large glass bottles like this breakage is real issue so it makes sense to wrap them so they can be moved with less chance of breakage. Note that if you do build one of these, be VERY careful moving them as they can break with a small slip and the large pieces of glass can easily cut tendons, leading to lots of long term issues.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoDemijohn is just a large glass bottle in en-gb usage, usually with straight sides and circular handles, holding just under 5 litres. Example: https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-demijohn-container-glass-45l/p/0022556 https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-demijohn-container-glass-4....
- kaikai 7y agoThey're also called carboys in the US. Nice brewing shops will have a variety of sizes and shapes to choose from.
- Doubl 7y agoI wonder if they're are any plastics in there
- julienreszka 7y agoI just don't think there is enough evidence to believe his story.
- reaperducer 7y agoPeople have been building terraria for centuries. You can buy all shapes and sizes in stores, some with fish. Though the fish ones probably don't last after the fish dies. Gardening is one of the many areas of life where the best information and the bulk of information is offline.
- munificent 7y agoTerminology pedantry since I recently got in "jarrariums" and have been reading a bunch... Most terraria are not sealed, so while we've been making them forever, that doesn't say much about the viability of sealed ones. As far as I know, research into closed ecosystems didn't start until the 20th century. If it has fish in it, it's not a terrarium. Terraria are land-based (hence the name). Think garden in a box. The main thing a terrarium gives you over simply potting some plants is that it can increase the local humidity. Also, you can have animals in it (usually invertebrates that eat detritus), which helps it be lower-maintainance. If it's full of water, it's an aquarium (again hence the name). Most aquaria today don't have living plants and only have animals. That requires mechanical filtration and oxygenation to replicate the side of the ecosystem that plants normally occupy. A "planted tank" is an aquarium with live plants in it. When balanced well, they can be lower maintainance because the plants and animals provide things the other need. If the box is half-submerged with both aquatic and land-based life, it's a "paludarium".
- TremendousJudge 7y ago>Gardening is one of the many areas of life where the best information and the bulk of information is offline. I've come to realize this is true, but why?
- freeflight 7y agoGardening/farming is pretty much as far removed from the urban, heavily tech-influenced lifestyle most netizens live in as it can be. But imho this is about to change, lots of people burning out on the rapid cycles and inherent unsustainability of living the "always online city lifestyle" and thus looking for ways to escape to something more natural in the form of gardening or even farming.
- lqet 7y agoVery cool! However, I found this remark strange: > some like Bob Flowerdew (organic gardener) thinks that “It’s wonderful but not for me, thanks. I can’t see the point. I can’t smell it, I can’t eat it,”. What kind of an argument is that?
- iainmerrick 7y agoNot an argument at all, but a discussion of taste? I think it’s quite clear. As a gardener, who values close contact and interaction with plants, he doesn’t see the point of plants that are permanently behind glass.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoSeen this before. Simplest answer: don't believe it. That cork in the top looks new. And very, very removable. And if you still want to believe it, without evidence, then I have some property in Florida to sell you.
- reaperducer 7y agoThere's several hundred years of evidence in the real world. Millions of similar terraria have been built around the world for centuries. The real reason this one is newsworthy is because nobody knocked it off the table and shattered it in 50 years.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoooooorrrrr...they've all been opened. None of them lasted as long as they say. Because none of them are secure.
- pvaldes 7y agoAgree with the cork part. Looks pretty new and loose. Tradescantia is not growth from seeds, so I assume also that the first seeds had died or survived for some years and Tradescantia was added later, maybe in 1972.
- tempodox 7y agoI have to try this. Maybe I'll finally get a plant to survive longer than a year in my burrow.
- pvaldes 7y agoEverything can be learned, and everybody can culture a plant but only a few can culture any plant. Maybe you need just some orientation.
- tombozi 7y agoIt's not a miracle, it's self-sustaining. Mine has been going strong for 1+ year now. I got it here: https://www.ferrarium.nl/ https://www.ferrarium.nl/
- weberc2 7y agoWould be interesting to study the evolution of the organisms contained therein over very long timescales.
- chrismeller 7y agoSo then I’m the only one who did this in elementary school, then? Soil from the yard, a couple of plant clippings, water... and seal it. I find it kind of surprising how excited the comments here are when 7 year olds around the world have done this same experiment.
- sophacles 7y agoI think the point isn't "look new terrarium tech was just invented". I think it's "this terrarium lasted 47 year sealed". Given that the terrarium guides I could find with a quick google suggest opening the vessel for gas exchange and fresh water every 4-8 weeks (depending on guide and plant type), the 2444 weeks reported here seems to be a long time.
- chrismeller 7y agoAdmittedly I’ve never done any research into it, but I’ve never heard anything of the sort. Close it up and see how long it lasts. I know that mine lasted for well over a year before my mom finally demanded we toss it because she was tired of it taking up space. Honestly, it’s just a small Biosphere. I don’t really understand why you would expect one to work and the other not to.
- toss1 7y agoBecause as the time is extended, the possibility for things to get critically out of balance increases, possibly exponentially. This is not merely sitting a coated steel bar on your shelf and expecting it to not rust. It is a highly dynamic cycle of multiple feedback loops and organizims, especially the soil microbiota. Any of it goes off, and the whole thing could collapse, and it could take a long time for that to go critical. In this very example, he presumably determined tha tit needed water after several years, but added enough to balance to system so it lasted in a sealed condition for 47 more years.
- AKifer 7y agoDid anyone try introduce an animal in such a closed system, insects for instance. Does it self sustain ?
- dmux 7y agoOn a larger scale, wouldn't this be Earth?
- malnourish 7y agoOn such a significantly larger scale that it would bear only passing resemblance
- NegativeLatency 7y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
- ASalazarMX 7y agoComplete with the "put it in a spot with enough sun light". Except the atmosphere leaks a little http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cluster_watches_Earth_s_leaky_atmosphere http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cluster_watc...
- m-i-l 7y agoI saw a shop selling these once: https://www.ecospheres.co.uk/ https://www.ecospheres.co.uk/ . They contain small marine shrimp, and "The only care the sphere requires is a source of indirect natural or artificial light" and they "have an average life expectancy of 2-3 years however it is not uncommon for them to survive for 7 to 10 years"[0]. [0] https://www.ecospheres.co.uk/what-is-an-ecosphere/ https://www.ecospheres.co.uk/what-is-an-ecosphere/
- QuercusMax 7y agoI have one of these sitting on the table right in front of me. We've had it for a couple months, and the brine shrimp are swimming around happily still. I figure it has a 50-50 chance of being broken by my kids before the shrimp die.
- pvaldes 7y agoI'm sceptical about the sealed part. Anybody having Tradescantia fluminensis knows that is a very easy plant to grow. It stores water in its stems so is relatively dry resistant, but it grows unlimited unless you clip it. So either there is some kind of autoprune system in the bottle, or somebody is opening the seal and clipping it. In that case there is a external source of water in the air in form of vapor. > Did anyone try introduce an animal in such a closed system, insects for instance. Does it self sustain? Unlikely with this species. Most animals are unable to eat it. In any case this is closer to a monoculture than to a real ecosystem between one plant and some fungus (needed to remove the dry parts and stems if we assume that there is not human intervention to clean the surplus).
- goda90 7y agoDoes someone need to clip it if it runs into glass?
- kaikai 7y agoI have several terrariums and the plants self-limit when they hit the glass. I have never needed to prune or trim them. When they get too dense they start dying back from moisture issues, and it self-regulates into a pretty stable loop.
- pvaldes 7y agoWhat species?
- drinane 7y agoIt would be cool if that was for an apartment
- oarfish 7y ago> In fact, more than a century has passed and David’s sealed bottle garden is still thriving and robust as can be. I'm not sure the author knows what a century is.
- noonespecial 7y ago53 Years. Almost certainly meant to include the word "half".
- 14 7y agoThat is a much better theory then mine that AI wrote the article and just messed up a couple details.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- fxleach 7y agoCame here to say that as well.
- stcredzero 7y agoThere should be more funding and research on self contained, or nearly self contained ecosystems. The cost is modest on the larger scheme of things, but the potential benefits in the next half century could well be tremendous. Also, doing such research here on Earth may well save the lives of many pioneers in the coming decades.
- ehnto 7y agoCody's Lab recently put together a sealed terrarium meant to emulate the conditions of the Carboniferous period, and although it's going to be slow going I am still excited to see how it progresses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgAbxP9SHQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgAbxP9SHQY