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My coworker had a smaller version of this in his cube. His son had made it in middle school and it had been going for 10+ years. I think his was sealed with wax or something. It's an easy experiment to reproduce and works great if you have enough time to wait around.
By mass, that vast majority of living material in that bottle is almost certainly bacteria, some nitrifying, others denitrifying. All otherwise decomposing, consuming, and recycling the various chemistry within.
Think about the earth as a sealed globe within space, and you start to understand how good a job bacteria does at balancing the chemistry of life.
I've actually seen something similar to this at a local museum called an "Ecosphere", which includes tiny shrimp living inside. They've been known to last for over ten years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosphere_(aquarium)
Carl Sagan's review of an Ecosphere: http://www.eco-sphere.com/sagan.html
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I don't think we can say it's clearly working... This seems like an extraordinary claim and it's hard to know if there's any truth fudging.
Another puzzling factor is the clarity of the glass. When I've seen bottle gardens, they all develop a thick scum from minerals in condensation, algae, and bacterial plaques.
It would be nice to hear an explanation.
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From a related article: "But the eco-system also uses cellular respiration to break down decaying material shed by the plant. In this part of the process, bacteria inside the soil of the bottle garden absorbs the plant's waste oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide which the growing plant can reuse."
Was this a planned hack, or does this naturally occur? My first thought was also, "Where does the CO2 come from?" I suspect this is a very fine balance - if you're off by just a little, one or the other would die. There's not much room for error in a jar.
Article mentions that most of the jars failed.
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> Biosphere 2 fell apart Wait, what's this? What happened?
Biosphere2 was an experiment to seal humans and plants i to a dome and not open it for some time. Fungus and other pests destroyed some important plants and the eco system collapsed. It had been built in the middle of a desert but urban expansion means the site is reasonably near housing now. There were a bunch of photos of the dusty derelict interiors floating around a few years ago. I kind of wish people would try…
Blogspam, original at http://www.nollywoodone.com/latest-additions/8934-the-sealed...
'The Internet Movie Database for Africa' is the original? For that article it's probably the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267504/The-s... He started it in 1960 with 'about a quarter of a pint of water', then added water in 1972.
What I'm more amused by is the level of scepticism over an self contained eco-system. In order for any eco-system, either contained or not contained, there has to be much greater tolerances to extreme conditions that we generally acknowledge. In truth, outside of absolute extremes where organic life is simply impossible because or either denaturing or absolute destruction of organic material, life will exist. It's al…
Whichever types it contains now, surely it started out with :)
So in a symbiotic bacteria/fungi/plant ecosystem, I can understand why CO2, H2O, and O2 might be able to remain in balance. But decomposition produces not only CO2, but CO, CH4, nitrate chemistry... I have trouble understanding why this cycle isn't at least a little bit leaky, since it seems like some of the trace gasses wouldn't automatically have all of the biological, solar, and marine sinks available in nature. I…
What I'm more amused by is the level of scepticism over an self contained eco-system. In order for any eco-system, either contained or not contained, there has to be much greater tolerances to extreme conditions that we generally acknowledge. In truth, outside of absolute extremes where organic life is simply impossible because or either denaturing or absolute destruction of organic material, life will exist. It's al…
> now contains bacteria, fungi, or other organisms Whichever types it contains now , surely it started out with :)