(THE CONVERSATION) From a distance, Biosphere 2 emerges from the cacti and creosote of the Sonoran desert like a gleaming oasis, a colony of glass and bright white structures. Despite being just ...

In the Arizona desert, a vast glass structure sits far from cities and farmland. It was built to test an idea that once seemed urgent and uncertain. Could humans survive inside a closed world with no ...

Biosphere 2 started with eight scientists and a very ambitious experiment. Now, almost 35 years later, it's still being used for cutting-edge research. Scientists continue to use it to study Earth's ...

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 ...

A giant impact on the early Earth could have brought the building blocks of RNA to our planet, which new research suggests could have quickly formed in the presence of compounds called borates. When ...