
A sealed bottle garden thriving after 40 years without fresh air or water - Tomte
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267504/The-sealed-bottle-garden-thriving-40-years-fresh-air-water.html
======
mapt
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 would be interested to know how the
internal pressure of this experiment fluctuates due to phase transitions,
especially chemical reactions which could potentially produce phase
transitions that are not thermally or biologically reversible in the vicinity
of STP.

~~~
nmjohn
It really depends on the bacterial flora present in the container. Bacteria
are incredibly diverse, and just as one decomposer may be a methanogen [1], a
different species of bacteria present may be a methanotroph [2]. So given the
right bacterial "mixture," a self-sustaining CH4 cycle is not unreasonable.

Additionally, CO is a metabolite for some methanogenic bacteria, specifically
in production of acetyl CoA [3].

My point is, as long as enough diversity has survived in the ecosystem, it is
quite possible that not only CO2/H20/O2 are able to maintain a balance, but
_most_ common molecules would be able to remain at nontoxic levels for the
plant.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogen)
[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanotroph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanotroph)
[3]:
[http://textbookofbacteriology.net/metabolism_7.html](http://textbookofbacteriology.net/metabolism_7.html)

~~~
Pitarou
In other words, the secret to having a viable sealed terrarium is in the
compost. Get the right compost, with the right population of bacteria, and the
whole thing will run forever.

~~~
DanBC
I am interested in the idea of synthetic soils. Arriving on Mars and creating
the right mix of sand, silt, and clay is easy enough. But it's the organic
matter and biomass that makes soil what it is. Research on this might also
have impacts on some parts of developing world where soil quity can be very
poor. (Although that's often because anything that could go into the ground to
improve soil has other uses).

~~~
zokier
One idea I've toyed with is building a "terrarium" (marsium?) with Mars
imitation soil and atmosphere, and attempt to bootstrap some life in there.

------
afternooner
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 also entirely possible that this
bottle now contains bacteria, fungi, or other organisms that are much more
efficient at breaking down the organic material left by the dying plant mater.

~~~
matt-attack
> now contains bacteria, fungi, or other organisms

Whichever types it contains _now_ , surely it started out with :)

~~~
TheCoreh
Not necessarily. The bacteria might have evolved inside the bottle.

------
crazydoggers
As someone who keeps both fresh water and salt water aquariums, it makes
perfect sense that this is completely plausible. I think most aquarist are
well aware that bacteria are the most powerful thing in keeping our aquarium
ecosystems in balance.

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)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosphere_\(aquarium\))

Carl Sagan's review of an Ecosphere: [http://www.eco-
sphere.com/sagan.html](http://www.eco-sphere.com/sagan.html)

------
wmeredith
Oh, hell, how did a Daily Mail link get to the front page? This is a british
tabloid. You may as well be debating the veracity of a story about a wolf boy
discovered in the wild.

~~~
codingdave
Would you prefer an article from the times?

[http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/biology/article3667780...](http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/biology/article3667780.ece)

~~~
DaleHarries1982
Yes, atleast the Times is a respected paper.

------
murbard2
A clear balloon containing an ecosystem would heat up due to the greenhouse
effect. If it's sufficiently large and allowed to slightly expand it could
float freely in the air. Imagine closed gardens flying freely around the
world.

~~~
wmil
I don't think you could get them to be consistently warm on Earth. But the
atmosphere on Venus is so thick you could have a bunch of these floating above
the clouds.

~~~
mikeash
Maybe you could replace some of the nitrogen with helium to achieve positive
buoyancy without a temperature difference.

~~~
pas
Wouldn't that leak out from .. basically anything solid?

~~~
murbard2
We're not talking superfluidic Helium here... Glass or BPA should be fine...
In that case the envelop is rigid and we might at well just suck out enough
air to get buoyancy.

~~~
andrewflnr
When I was reading about Sterling engines, people talked about H2 leaking
straight through the steel walls of the container. I can't find a similar
reference for helium, but it's conceivable, to a non-expert anyway. No
superfluidity required.

~~~
maaku
Big difference between H2 and He. Leakage is a problem, but not so nasty a
problem. (Hydrogen leaks through solid metal. Yes you read that right.)

------
davidw
I used to love making those things with pickle jars:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=pickle+jar+terrarium&es_sm=1...](https://www.google.com/search?q=pickle+jar+terrarium&es_sm=106&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=zr6RU-7dM-
Hb0QXk8IHIBA&ved=0CCMQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=961)

I don't suppose my parents have any of them left though... they tended to get
kind of crusty with something growing on the glass and blotting out the light.

------
ctdonath
Compare the EcoSphere: [http://www.eco-sphere.com](http://www.eco-sphere.com)

I had one; amusing, though seemed finicky about lighting.

~~~
prawks
> EcoSpheres have an average life expectancy of two years.

Very interesting, I had thought they were sustainable for much longer than
that. I suppose even the most tightly controlled starting conditions will lead
to unpredictable results when you have organisms reproducing.

~~~
mml
I still have one. The shrimp were alive for about 2 years. Now there are other
organisms...

I think these are more about the incredible toughness of the shrimp involved.
Their native habitat consists of rainwater puddles held in volcanic rock, so
the shrimposphere is probably fairly luxurious.

~~~
Wingman4l7
> I think these are more about the incredible toughness of the shrimp
> involved.

Pretty much; this guy[1] claims that basically, the shrimp slowly starve over
the course of a couple years, shrinking after each molt.

[1]:
[http://www.petshrimp.com/opaeinfo.php](http://www.petshrimp.com/opaeinfo.php)

~~~
radio4fan
I'd have to doubt his claim, given this comment which shows they must be
breeding:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7858130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7858130)

------
CapitalistCartr
I can't figure out what would be providing more CO2. The container is near
full of greenery; where does it get air exchange? Maybe the cork leaks just
enough is all I can figure.

~~~
minikites
Exactly, where is the plant mass coming from? Can bacteria break soil down
into carbon that the plant can use to build more leaves/stems/roots?

~~~
CapitalistCartr
The Daily Fail version claims so, but that doesn't seem sufficient.
Nonetheless, its clearly working. It'd be interesting to insert a probe
through the cork and run a real-time analysis of the air composition.

~~~
darkxanthos
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.

~~~
droopyEyelids
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.

~~~
bronson
This is a great GREAT point.

It would be nice to hear an explanation.

~~~
ceejayoz
Magnetic scrubbing brushes. They're commonly used in aquariums.

------
zwieback
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.

~~~
DanBC
There are a variety of "Instructibles" for these. They're of variable quality
and I have no idea how to select the instructible with most chance of sucess.

------
tempodox
Absolutely fascinating. The greatest Bio- / Hardware hack I've seen yet.
Congrats to the gardener.

(Just assuming it's true)

------
omilu
Most aquarium plants grow excellent in this way, better than when they are
submerged in an aquarium. Aquarium plants have two distinct forms, submerged
or emerged, and the foilage can look completely different. The emerged form
does better, since it doesn't need to compete with algae and co2 is more
available. To grow your own plants, fill a pickle jar with damp miracle grow
organic potting soil, and plant what ever aquarium plants you can get your
hand on, seal the jar, than enjoy.

------
lovemenot
Assume the garden is somehow provably what it is claimed to be. Further assume
that it is not cleaned manually because the usual culprits for blackening the
inside, by pure chance, happened to be absent or long dead.

I am curious how one might go about reproducing this exact ecosystem in other
bottles by cloning the original, without adding contaminants. Under these
assumptions selling clones could become a commercial proposition.

------
fit2rule
This is motivation to try to repeat the experiment, in my opinion .. would be
a great Instructable, with the last step: wait 50 years or so .. ;)

------
kjhughes
StackExchange Skeptics addressed this last year:

 _Can a plant survive bottled in its own ecosystem for 50 years?_

[http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15838/can-a-
plan...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15838/can-a-plant-
survive-bottled-in-its-own-ecosystem-for-50-years)

~~~
blazespin
It's not exactly addressed. They just say it might work.

------
tonylemesmer
So it has had water and presumably some atmosphere was exchanged when it was
watered in 1972, 40 years ago. The title is somewhat misleading but 40 years
is still a long time.

The stopper doesn't look like its particularly well fastened and could
potentially pop up and allow leaks. Impressive but without closer inspection
it looks like a slightly flawed execution to me. Maybe I'm just being
pedantic. A picture of the starting point would be nice.

~~~
blt
from the nollywoodone.com version:

"[he] has only watered the plant twice, the last time in 1972 when he oiled
the plastic stopper so that it wedged so tightly it hasn't been out since."

------
jchrisa
I've just been reading Verner Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky where the space-
dwellers consider these the highest art form.

------
contingencies
Hah! I can't read this because ... provisional military junta in Thailand not
happy with Daily Mail?

Some kind of breakdown here: [http://www.andrew-drummond.com/2014/05/daily-
mail-and-mail-o...](http://www.andrew-drummond.com/2014/05/daily-mail-and-
mail-on-sunday-online.html)

------
e3pi
"A good software project is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
into place but a tendril seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
hope of enfoliating among the world wide landscapes."

    
    
                    -- John C Hardy

------
binarycheese
What if we build a huge sealed bottle garden and send to Mars, can humans live
in it!

~~~
brazzy
No. First, every kilogram we send to Mars will be _hugely_ expensive, so low
mass will be prioritized over long-term sustainability for research and
exploration missions.

Second, the plants chosen for bottle gardens are very sturdy and tolerant of
non-optimal environments. Humans are a lot more sensitive.

If you're interested in the topic, read "The Martian" by Any Weird, a very
well-researched SF story about an astronaut who gets left behind during a Mars
mission and has to survive for several years using equipment that was only
specced to sustain the expedition for a month.

~~~
joshvm
Thanks for the recommendation, looks like a good read. Although I was a little
disappointed when I found out his name was actually Andy Weir, not Any Weird
:P

------
NAFV_P
I was wondering how easy/difficult this phenomenon is to study in depth. If I
wanted to examine any organisms in the jar, I would have trouble doing it
while simultaneously maintaining the ecosystem's independence.

------
enscr
> The only external input needed to keep the plant going is light, since this
> provides it with the energy it needs to create its own food and continue to
> grow.

Future of clean energy ?

------
Houshalter
How long will it last? Will the plant eventually get a mutation and die?

------
mikkom
Blogspam, original at

[http://www.nollywoodone.com/latest-additions/8934-the-
sealed...](http://www.nollywoodone.com/latest-additions/8934-the-sealed-
bottle-garden-still-thriving-after-40-years-without-fresh-air-or-water.html)

~~~
Luc
'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...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267504/The-
sealed-bottle-garden-thriving-40-years-fresh-air-water.html)

He started it in 1960 with 'about a quarter of a pint of water', then added
water in 1972.

~~~
maaarghk
it is indeed originally from the daily fail. that's their watermark bottom
left.

~~~
mxfh
The Daily Mail, and others just picked this up too. It was first covered in a
Q&A style gardening radio show touring the UK.

You can hear David asking at 35:20 in the BBC Radio 4 program _Gardeners
Question Time_ first broadcasted Friday 18 January 2013.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pw5sd](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pw5sd)

The original copy text is under all these 10 orginal photographs taken by Phil
Yeomans/BNPS published 21 Jan 2013:
[http://bnps.photoshelter.com/gallery/52-year-old-sealed-
gard...](http://bnps.photoshelter.com/gallery/52-year-old-sealed-garden-in-a-
bottle/G0000109R_kZmtl4/)

There is also a close up of the seal: [http://bnps.photoshelter.com/gallery-
image/52-year-old-seale...](http://bnps.photoshelter.com/gallery-
image/52-year-old-sealed-garden-in-a-bottle/G0000109R_kZmtl4/I0000taYoN9ZzXJs)

------
kourt
The headline should read: "53-year-old Sealed Bottle Garden..."

I see this more and more even in edited publications. It's especially irksome
here since the article contains almost no actual writing.

------
philosophus
Maybe I'm being nit-picky, but it's not "entirely self-sufficient," as it
still needs light from an external source.

~~~
mabhatter
Earth isn't entirely self sufficient and needs light from an external
source....

It's working in the same constraints the origins ed evolved for... Just
smaller

------
taigeair
doesn't the plan die? or it's producing seeds itself?

------
chjawadm
Reminds me of the movie: "the journey to the center of the earth"

------
hellbreakslose
Hmm can we open the bottle and test if the water is indeed from 1972?

I mean how can we actually test that this guy isn't just making things up, and
wasn't opening the bottle to water the ecosystem?

~~~
mark-r
Water recycles itself naturally. I'd be more curious to know how the oxygen
converts back to carbon dioxide.

~~~
ramchip
Respiration. Microorganisms use oxygen, and so does the plant when it's not
under sunlight.

------
elwell
And plant-rights activists aren't all over this? No thank you, my plants like
to be cage-free.

------
qwerta
Perhaps not as exiting, but I have aquarium which requires maintenance only 4x
a year. Feeder, filters, lights, water exchange etc operate automatically.

------
JoeAltmaier
Easiest explanation: they're fibbing. Somebody opens the bottle regularly.
There's no reason to take every extraordinary claim posted on the internet at
face value. Next we'll see bigfoot photos?

~~~
jusben1369
You're assuming it's an extraordinary claim. However, it seems as though it's
a claim that is grounded in science and repeatable.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its an outrageous stretch that a sealed bottle could support an ecosystem for
decades; previous experiments achieved only months or a year or two.

