Tabletop World: Sustainable ecological cycle to Space colonization

When pandemic shook the entire world, I mused on the earth’s ecosphere and replicated the simplest ecological cycle to create a small tabletop world. Incorporating air, water and life forms and their intricate interactions; I could make self-contained ecosystem inside a glass jar.

How to create little world?

Materials required

A transparent glass jar, tap water, any container or bottles, forceps and gloves.

Steps to follow

• Find a suitable shallow area in the nearest pond or water body.

• You might see floating sap green hairy algae or many other water plants. This marks a perfect hub for many microscopic organisms and zooplanktons.

• Wear gloves and drag your container or bottle through the water and gently lift out some pond water and sludge.

• Collect few aquatic plants such as- Duckweed, Water lettuce, Coontail etc.

World in making

1. Pour a little bit of collected pond sludge in fresh glass jar(think of it as base or earth crust).

2. Add tap water in a jar filling approximately 2/3rd of the system and rest air will fill the space.

3. Add pond water/soup which holds bacteria, algae, planktons.

4. Gently place the aquatic plants in water (as in my case it was duckweed) so that it does not drown or get stuck on jar wall.

5. Tiny natural objects can be added for decoration such as shell or small driftwood.

6. Tighten the lid of the Jar and keep in indirect sun light(require sunlight daily atleast for 12-14 hours) and room temperature (23-27 degree Celsius).

7. Allow the system to settle.

Bingo!! Your table top world is ready to flourish (hopefully!). Since, you are in charge of the little world, do not get too ambitious and over accessorize itas you might make the jar crowded leaving little space to breathe.

How earth model functions?

“In this small Eden, the inhabitants have an extremely intimate relationship.”-Carl Sagan

The basic principles of ‘Ecosystem ecology’ come from ecologist H.T. Odum but the horizon was further explored as Autonomous Biological System- a sealed aquarium (aka Tabletop Shrimp Support Module) invented by Jane Poynter, which has already made a successful trip to international space stations. Pioneered by two scientists, the late Dr. Joe Hanson and the late Dr. Clair Folsome, the ‘EcoSphere’ is a technology developed at NASA's research laboratories to make life easier for space explorers and space colonizers.

“In this small Eden, the inhabitants have an extremely intimate relationship”

-Carl Sagan

Considering the present rate of environmental degradation, in future, a situation may arise when we might have to colonize in Mars or in other such planets or habitats after making our own one uninhabitable. One possible challenge, in such case, would be to transport food, oxygen and water without increasing additional weight. The solution is to generate our own oxygen and nutrients by recycling all our waste-without increasing any additional resource usage. Think about a spacecraft like a selfsustainable closed system (like the one I am creating in Jar) and all the explorers or space crew within it as a part of the system.

* Read more about ‘BIOS-3’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS-3), ‘biosphere 2’(http://www.b2science.org/) and “The Development and Testing of Visualization and Passively Controlled Life Support Systems for Experimental Organisms During Spaceflight” by Poynter, J., et al. (2001).

DIVING IN TABLE-TOP WORLD

With each passing day, the world started unfolding in my window and left me wondering. First, I started noticing tiny dots like things jerkily drifting in water. Those were Ostracods, a kind of crustacean. There were many other zoo-planktons too (Copepods being the most common one) but difficult to identify in naked eye. Surprisingly, I discovered one tiny snail who would nonchalantly scavenge on my jar. Soon, one macro aquatic insect (Order: Hemiptera) also popped up who would mostly perch upside down on driftwood like an ‘Econaut’ (it died though in a few days, most likely because of the earthquake that I brought into while shifting the world into another room).

This ecosphere can be a perfect showpiece blending art and science. One can sit quietly and observe table-top little world every day and philosophize little things about the larger world. Such as what is the role of us, the human beings in the system? Do tampering of exhaustible resources (the way we want) makes the system more sustainable or crashprone? With rising human population and blatant use of resources- at what extent are we disturbing the earth’s sustainable cycle? Can we use these small ecospheres as snapshots from real ecosystem and get more insights on fragile ecological cycle and its components? Remember, our Earth came into being as a result of billion years of natural experiments whereas we humans are just newbie. The sooner we understand the dynamics and nuances of ecosphere and act accordingly, the better we can safeguard our ‘Econauts’ (unlike mine!)