Living inside the glass enclosure known as Biosphere 2 for two years wasn’t easy. If its eight pioneering residents wanted pizza, they had to grow their own wheat and milk a goat for cheese. They contended with thinning air, insufficient food, constant work and, worst of all, each other. Biosphere 2 — an attempt to create an enclosed, self-sustaining environment like Earth’s — was part ecology project and part trial space colony.
September 17th, 2003
UC lands $330 million deal Contra Costa Times
NASA/Ames Research Center in Mountain View said Tuesday it has picked the University of California for a competitive $330 million, 10-year contract that will enable the space agency to harness some of the top scientific minds in the UC system. The contract taps UC Santa Cruz to manage the development of a University Affiliated Research Center whose work will focus on interdisciplinary research in astrobiology and informational technology and its fusion with nanotechnology and biotechnology.
March 18th, 2001
Alien science keeps students’ interest Contra Costa Times
Is there life on other planets? If so, does it look like the monstrous thing Sigourney Weaver battled in the “Alien” movie blockbusters? Could you kiss it the way Captain Kirk was so fond of doing on “Star Trek”? Or, could it be related to your house plant? Students are grappling with such lively questions in “Astrobiology: The Search for Life in the Universe,” a course being piloted at Leicester, West Springfield, and 23 other high schools and middle schools nationwide.