 Welcome to Web Chat Wednesdays. I'm Studio Guide Ryan and I'm here with my co-worker Chris. Hello. Our guest today is John Adams, the Deputy Director of Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2 is located in Arizona and is one of the world's most unique facilities dedicated to the research and understanding of global scientific issues. John Adams has held a wide range of titles at Biosphere 2 over his 25 years of working there. Thanks so much for joining us today, John. How are you doing today? I'm doing well and thank you for the opportunity. We're so glad to have you here. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's a beautiful view you got behind yourself of the entire facility. So our first question today is, do you think you can give us a brief history of the origins of Biosphere 2? For a lot of people, I don't think they sort of realize just how storied of a history this facility has. And especially, you know, we find folks sort of in that younger demographic that are younger than I am because, you know, when I was finishing up at the University of Arizona, Biosphere 2 was really sort of hitting mainstream media and all the press coverage. But really everything got started for Biosphere 2 in this concept, you know, in sort of the mid-70s. But it really began to pick up steam in the early 80s when they purchased the property that you see behind me or in that image there with the intentions of building a system or a facility that would capture, in part, some of Earth's systems and those functions. And their fundamental basis for doing so is they felt that we needed to better understand Earth's systems. They're infinitely complex. They knew that they would not be able to sort of tease apart some of these fundamental mechanisms unless they built a facility like Biosphere 2 and were able to capture what was happening on Earth. Now, what ended up sort of making the headlines and because it's, you know, it's a lot cooler to talk about it. And it's the same things that we hear about today. It's all of this discussions around what is it going to take to get us back on the moon and eventually set up a colony on Mars. So we hear so much about that today with these private companies, with NASA's objective of trying to get back to the moon by 2024. And we know that there's a lot that needs to be done in order to do that. And when they started building Biosphere 2 in 1987, there were similar discussions. And a lot of people termed or view Biosphere 2 as sort of this futuristic colony-like structure that we could maybe envision seeing on the moon. In fact, there's been a lot of artistic renderings that display it as such. But again, that foundation was to better understand Earth systems. And it took them four years to build the facility that you see there behind me. It covers a little over three acres. The north-south axis, which that tall pyramid that you see there in the back, that's the rainforest. And so that's on the northern end of the structure. And if you work your way south, there's another smaller pyramid on the southern end. That whole distance is almost three football fields in length. That rainforest is about 91 feet tall. It's almost equivalent to about a half-acre in size. The whole structure, and you can see a little bit of that white area or that white skinned portion, that's what we call the habitat. That's where they lived when they were inside. And what you can't see is right behind that is another half-acre of space, all encased under that same glass structure, but we call the former agricultural area, which is now the site of Leo, the landscape evolutionary observatory. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. But they lived inside of that. And when I say they, it was eight people. Four men and four women were sealed inside Biosphere 2 in September of 1991. There was a lot of hype, there was a lot of anticipation, but ultimately, they just didn't quite get some of the balances correct. Now, in the popular media, if you go and do a YouTube search or look at old press clippings, one of the most common terms that I hear are used to describe those early experiments inside Biosphere 2 when these people were living inside is that they failed. Well, I come from a background from science and you never fail an experiment. So you always learn something new. The reason we do experiments is because we don't know the outcome. If we know the outcome, then we're just proving what we already know. And the objective is to learn more. And I don't know of anything, whether it's the iPhones that we all use today, or Android, or our computers, that sort of they got it right out of the gate. There's always an iterative process. That's science. And Biosphere 2 is in the same. So when they sealed it up, they didn't quite know what was going to happen. And one of the big, well, so there was three big challenges. You know, one, surprise, surprise, that the eight people didn't get along really well. Okay, so it was really a social experiment. And I think, you know, we're always gravitated towards that social side of the human dynamic. I mean, just look at how popular, you know, these programs like Survivor and Big Brother, and you know, even, you know, anything that captures sort of the human drama. And there was there was definitely a little bit of that going on inside with these eight people. The other thing was, is that that half acre of farm space, although was highly productive, did not necessarily produce the adequate calories for their daily needs. So they are always a little bit hungry. Now, they never were nutritionally deficient, but definitely calorie deficient. And then the final thing is that inside that structure, they sealed in a rainforest, an ocean, a savannah, a marsh, a desert, you know, they had hoped that these systems would help to balance the atmospheric needs. And what I mean by that is produce enough oxygen for them to breathe, recycle that carbon dioxide that was being produced by other systems, and it just didn't work. So oxygen in this two year stay about 500 days into that first two year mission, basically dropped to a level of 14.2%. They had to add or introduce oxygen back in for the safety of the eight people that were sealed inside. But they weren't forthcoming initially with that fact. And so when it came out contrary, they would had to retract some statements. And we know how difficult it is to recover from those types. In my opinion of missteps. But it was a learning process. There were a lot of people who said that it would never flourish. It would turn into this sort of big algal mat inside. But it really self organized. If you look at it today, we have a fully established rainforest, we have a functioning Caribbean reef environment, we have a mangrove system, a savanna full of trees, a desert area that just looks absolutely incredible. And it's really doing pretty well. Sure, there were some challenges. But overall, that's sort of a quick overview of the history. And you can read a lot about Biosphere 2. But again, the most important takeaway, it was not a failure. Yeah, thank you for the thorough answer. So how is the focus of Biosphere 2 changed? Well, we'll pick up sort of where I left off with the history. So eight people were settled. They stayed inside for two years. There was another mission much shorter that happened sort of mid 1994. It only went six months. This time it was seven people, five men, two women. And then the person who paid to build Biosphere 2 in his team, this gentleman by the name of Ed Bass, you know, the investment to build Biosphere 2 is estimated in the neighborhood of $250 million. So this is sort of late 80s, early 90s dollars. If we extrapolate that with inflation, I got to imagine we're over a billion dollars. But because of some of the things I described, you know, the social challenges, you sort of couldn't get the atmosphere balance right. You know, having to introduce oxygen and sort of how difficult that was and how negatively it was perceived in the press, they decided to take it in a different direction. Some folks from Columbia University actually were helping them understand why they couldn't figure out oxygen was going down at one rate, carbon dioxide was going up at another, and they should have really been nearing one another and they couldn't figure out why it wasn't. It's a sealed environment. When this facility was commissioned, it only lost about 10 percent of its volume annually. That's a thousand times more well-sealed than your typical building. That leakrate rivals out of the International Space Station. So in a sense, you should know where every molecule was going. And they couldn't mass balance their equations. And what they did is they ended up finding out that as the concrete was curing inside, it was actually reacting with the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is a carbon and oxygen molecule. And it was binding that. And not that any good civil engineer wouldn't have known this, but they just didn't sort of put it together in this context. That was really the scientific light bulb moment because this guy by the name of Wally Broker and a gentleman by the name of Jeff Severinghouse, who now has a very distinguished career over at Schrift's Institute there in Southern California, you know, they basically said we can trace every single molecule. He's very complex, large systems in ways that we can't do on the outside. We think it should be used for earth and environmental sciences unless for having people live inside in these social experiments. So that really began to change the trajectory. And that all started sort of late 1994 and officially in 1996 Columbia University took over. They kicked the tires. Ultimately though, they had an administrative change. We know what happens when you have those types of administrative change. So about seven years into their tenure, they decided they weren't going to continue to manage the facility because they had a changing president, changing vice provost and these other key positions within the university. And so it went back to the original ownership group and that group, we actually commissioned the study at Bass that is at the National Academy of Sciences. We had people from across the country say, you know, what's the value of bias for two? Why should we use it for science? Is there still a value? Do people find it? You know, we had people from NSF and NASA and DOE and other universities across the country and they all, you know, almost unanimously said yes. It is not a trivial management objective to try to run the facility. And so, but ultimately they felt it was most important that a in-state institution be, you know, running or managing the facility. And so Joaquin Ruiz, who was at the time the dean of the College of Science at the University of Arizona, this is the biggest college at the University of Arizona. They do everything from space to hydrology to earth and environmental sciences. And he said, you know, I think we can do science there that we can't do anywhere else. And so, sort of a long story short in 2007, they assumed management and then eventual ownership of the facility and, you know, be built on that which Columbia established, but even sort of took it steps further. And we can talk about those as we go through, but have done some incredible research inside this facility that just cannot be done anywhere else in the world. Well, it's amazing that you're continuing to use, like, that facility not letting it go to waste, because it is an amazing facility. I'm gonna go ahead and pass it off to Ryan. Yeah, definitely. I'm so excited to hear about all the research that you guys are doing. I mean, it feels like a wonder of not only the United States, but the world really and the amount that you are all able to accomplish there. But I'm also interested in your journey. What was your journey that led you to working at Biosphere 2? Yeah, I mean, it's sort of unique. I was finishing up at the University of Arizona, had a project with one of my faculty that I was working with at Iowa State. So it was at Iowa State for just, you know, really a short period of time. And some of the folks that I was working with said that, you know, there's some opportunities out at Biosphere 2. You should really look into them. And so I, you know, applied and for some openings that they had, I came in, I started off, you know, really sort of at almost like an intern level and was doing database access and data visualization for them. Sort of looking at the conditions and all of the different biomes, presenting those on a daily basis to this management team. And, you know, just sort of grew because I think really this is one of the things I often tell folks who are looking or who are just entering into the job market is, you know, I was never afraid to say that I couldn't do something. And I would always figure it out. I was adaptable to whatever they wanted me to do. And that led from sort of this database to, you know, most of my research and background was sort of with animals and birds. And this was now all dealing with plants. So, you know, took it upon myself to learn a lot about plant physiology, how to operate the instruments that they needed to measure these things, was able to sort of climb up in the canopy of the Biosphere 2 rain forest and start to take these measurements they felt were important. So, you know, over time just built my experience with the facility helped a lot and was part of the groups when it came to well, how are we going to re-engineer it and retool it so that we can meet this new objective and was part of those. And so, you know, always sort of adapted and repurposed myself so that at least as I perceived it had a value to Biosphere 2. In particular though most predominantly on the research side. And I think that's what allowed me to transition as it moved from Columbia University back to the original ownership group then eventually to its current ownership with the University of Arizona and my current role. So, you know, I feel really fortunate because I've been here for, you know, almost are over 25 years. And I think, you know, when I talk to a lot of my friends and stuff, it's just uncommon to hear people who have been in positions for that long. It's just, it seems like, you know, we all switch every seven, eight years and move to another one. And I feel extremely fortunate although my employer technically has changed, my place of employment has not. That's really funny. You know, I think it's a testament to Biosphere 2 that you have been able to do so many different kinds of things there. And it's really incredible like all of the positions that you've like had at Biosphere 2 and it just goes to show like what a multifaceted place it is and how much you're all really able to accomplish there. But I'm also curious about what's happening today and like what is the day in the life of working at Biosphere 2? Yeah. So, you know, Biosphere 2 now is 30 years old and it's a complex facility. It's a living system. You know, it's almost, I sort of equate it to, you know, those who work in botanical gardens, greenhouses, you know, even zoos. There's things that have to be done regardless of what's happening outside there's conditions that have to be maintained, animals that have to be fed. Otherwise, if you don't, they depend on you for their existence. And, you know, with Biosphere 2 for us, it's very similar. You know, we've got to make sure that the conditions under the glass are being maintained appropriately and that we are optimizing those conditions if it's sort of during a research campaign. We're reaching those targeted values that they've set so they can carry out their experiment and have hopefully get meaningful data out of it. But it's, you know, it comes in. It starts, for me, starts pretty early. I usually get here around 6 or 630 and, you know, check in with the operator. We have a 24-hour person that's here on site. So, that's a rotational shift and just, you know, see how things went through the night. Are there any, you know, any mechanical issues that we have to deal with or that we should be concerned with? And so, you know, that sort of starts off the day and then it's meeting with the folks who manage the biome. So, we've got a guy by the name of Jason Dulu who oversees the rainforest in the desert, a person by the name of Katie Morgan and Megan Russell and they oversee the ocean and, you know, talk to them. Are there any concerns they have? Is there things that we need to do? What's their plan for the day? How can we help them achieve what they've got done? You know, you know, things like, oh, the pump tripped off or, you know, we've got places where we're raising corals and, you know, one of the systems just isn't behaving like it should or the lights didn't go off last night like they're supposed to. So, you know, all those typical mechanical things that are crucial, often behind the scenes, but you need to address pretty quickly otherwise they can have devastating effects. And then, you know, in my current role, I help to oversee all the operations. So, not only do we have stuff going on under the glass, but we also have the public coming and visiting by us for two. So, we've just come out of COVID sort of the really sort of restrictive restrictions and we're allowing people to come back on to the property in a very limited and controlled manner. We have an app, but it's making sure that those things work and our admissions folks have what they need and, you know, there isn't a call-off. And we're also building out the site. So, we've got people from other departments on campus. We just put up a 6.1 meter radio telescope on our property. We've got five space situational observatories for another department that they've got. They're looking to continue to expand that infrastructure, which is great for us. So, you know, for me, it's dealing with those and making sure we're getting permits to build those things and getting bids to move them along. So, I mean, I think you kind of touched on it that no day is ever the same here at Biosphere 2. Work with an incredible team of people, although we're very small, and it's remarkable, I think, in a real testament to the people we have here today of just how much they get done and how much they're able to do with, you know, a relatively small team. That's awesome. It sounds like a very complex orchestra, but it seems like it's working. And I did check out the app, and I love it. It's a fun way to check out Biosphere 2, even if you're not there in person. I know it's there to, like, help guide the tour, but, you know, I enjoyed looking at it, even though I wasn't there. So, you allow students to research at Biosphere 2. So, what kind of opportunities do they have there as students? Yeah, so we have opportunities for undergraduates, sort of, master's levels, and even PhD students, as well as postdocs. So, the opportunities include, for example, we just completed actually about a year ago now, just prior to COVID really, sort of, changing all of our lives very dramatically and limiting sort of access, but we had a group of researchers, an international group of researchers of about a hundred. They were from Germany and Austria and Switzerland and England and as well as our U.S. partners, but we subjected our rainforest to a 70-day drought. We were able to engage a number of undergraduate students helping to prep the system prior to that experiment, and then helping with a lot of the different measurements that needed to be taken over the duration of that experiment. So, that's one example. We have several of our faculty that are working in our systems, whether it's the ocean of the rainforest or Leo, and so oftentimes we have a number of undergraduates who come in and they'll do sort of their senior capstone project. They'll help, sort of, just as an intern to gain experience. So, we've got several folks in our ocean system that are doing that, and so those are really unique opportunities. We have master's level students that will do a portion of their thesis work at Biosphere 2 in one of our systems. Same thing for several of our PhD students as well, and then, you know, we do have postdocs working for several of our faculty, of which a lot of their research that they're doing is founded here at Biosphere 2. And one example, we got this guy, so it's Dr. Dan. We call him Dr. Dan, the clam man, but that's because he works with giant clams in our ocean. He's great if you get on YouTube or TikTok. I mean, he's super funny, and really sort of puts things in, I think, easy to understand terms, but he's growing giant clams in our ocean, and he is developing methods and standardizing those methods. So, regardless of where you are, if you're measuring giant clams, there's some uniformity, and that way it allows these researchers to communicate the changes or the impacts that they're seeing the conditions in the oceans are having on these different species they're working with around the world. And so, you know, that's one example of project. So, it's really the full spectrum, and it's great, but, you know, we are located, you know, about 50 minutes to the north of Tucson or the University of Arizona. So, it is a commitment when the students come up here that we usually they spend, you know, a day doing things and making the most out of it. That's an amazing opportunity. I can only imagine, like, having the opportunity to study. I do feel like, like, when you work with people who are doing amazing things, it helps, like, shape you into something, like, greater to your, like, full potential. So, I know that you guys are turning out these great students and who are going to do, you know, carry on the legacy. And turning out great research. I mean, I'm so curious if you could expand more on some of the examples of research and studies that you guys are doing at Biosphere 2, like, for the future and how it might impact, like, I mean, you touched on this a little bit already, but, like, so many different areas of science, like, you mentioned space research, and then also the that it's the bridge between, like, laboratory research and also in the field research and how the different biomes might have their own, each might have their own studies that's going on. So, I'm curious if you could expand more on some examples about what's happening in the future with that, too. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great point. I mean, that's why we're here. That's why the University of Arizona took over, is because of the unique research opportunity. So, really, if you look under the glass, there's three primary focal areas. There's the rainforest, there's the ocean, and there's that what we call Leo, the landscape evolution observatory, and we've repurposed what I mentioned earlier, that previous agricultural space to house Leo. The rainforest, you know, is a fully established tropical system, complete with tropical plants, and it was originally modeled after an area to find out in the Amazon base. And now the important thing is that all the systems I'm going to talk about, none of them are animal. So, there's no true replica for earth or earth systems. And I think the most important lesson learned early on from bias for two is just how little we truly understand earth systems. But since our rainforest has been in place for roughly 30 years, it has 98 species in it. You know, it's got a soil depth in some of the deeper areas, you know, that's close to 15 feet. Some of these trees now are pushing up against the upper portions of the glass, which is right at 91 feet tall. So, you've got this really well established community and, you know, there are questions. So, there was a there was a paper published where it was about the big leaf model and it said, okay, you know, tropical systems are going to, they're going to saturate their ability to take up carbon dioxide is going to plateau at about 600 parts per million. Well, how do you test that? You can't stick a dome over an area in Brazil and test that idea. Well, because we've got a system, it functions not exactly, but close to, we can understand some of those fundamental mechanisms. We took our rainforest through a series of atmospheric CO2 levels, that which was beyond the 600 parts per million and we found that our system, just like the model predicted, saturated at 600 parts per million. So, model validation and calibration, that's one example. Another one is this, we did an experiment, one of our post docs, what she did is she just published a paper in Nature Plants. It also was picked up by National Geographic as part of a larger story that they've just published, but the idea was is how resilient are these systems under higher temperatures, in particular our tropical systems? And what resiliency do they have? Do they completely sort of fall off? Or, you know, are they a little bit more resilient than we thought? And what she was able to do is she looked at how well they are at taking up CO2, giving off oxygen, this photosynthetic process, and she found and was able to have data to support that they're a little bit more resilient than what we had thought under higher temperature. Now, that's a good thing, because we see them getting warmer and drier in the future. This most recent experiment was this international team subjected it to a 70-day drought, and they looked at how the system changed its partitioning and cycling of carbon, energy, and water. Because we can control the atmosphere. We can release tracers into the system and really precisely know, well, is it going all into the roots? Or is it in the stem? Or is it in the leaves in the mid canopy? Or is it all the way at the top? So they can use these tracers to do things that they just couldn't do in nature. In our ocean system, there's a big question. We hear a lot about the extensive reef loss around the world. The Great Barrier Reef has lost 50% of its corals and it's continuing to accelerate. People are very concerned. That's primarily driven by temperature, but we know that increases in atmospheric CO2 means you're going to get a change in water chemistry. CO2 is a gas soluble in water, so more in the atmosphere means more in the water. That ultimately translates into a reduction in the pH of the water column. There's some chemistry that happens that changes that availability of a carbonate ion, and it's not as available under higher CO2 concentrations. And what we found is that coral suffers. So we published a paper in one of the first places to show the negative impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 on coral calcification rates. Today, we're actually working with a company in Southern California. We're right in the early stages of developing a scientific protocol for them to work with us. But the idea is to use our system to test probiotics and how they may help corals deal better with heat. Now, we're a great place to do it because you got to test those ideas in a lab and you got to retest and you know test them over and over. The ocean is a bigger system too where we can do some of those things and how can you distribute them and what is their resiliency because we can take our ocean system and we can change the water chemistry as I just mentioned. We can change the temperature in very dramatic ways and our ocean system that system is a million gallons. So it's the largest experimental ocean in the world. So yes, there's bigger ones at Sea World. There's bigger ones at Georgia Aquarium, but they're not willing to push the limits to understand the implications of those changes on the organisms living in them. That's what we're here to do and we're here to try to understand those. In Leo, we've created three large hill slopes that replications and we're looking at how does the progressive change in the landscape change the dynamics of the hydrologic cycle. So it rains in the mountains. How much water ends up downstream for you and I to use and what impacts the quality of that water. It is all driven. Well, much of it is driven by that which is happening below the surface. But hydrologists will still tell you they don't know really what's going on once it goes below the surface. It's still very much a black box. These three hill slopes were specifically designed to try to understand some of those basic hydrologic properties. How they change and building complexities in a system and how does that change those dynamics. So that's a really quick overview and there's a lot more that we can go into detail and you can find online about some of this research as well. Thank you. Yeah, where where could people like patrons who are more interested in any of that research that you guys are doing there? Is there a place that they might be able to search or find? Yeah. So our our website is a great source. So www.biasturetuespelledout.org and you can go online and sort of there's a right at the bottom of the homepage. There's significant research outcomes. So a lot of what I just highlighted is there. You can go to the research section and you can look at each of the biomes and there's descriptions of what we're doing. You know, sort of if people are looking for just the shorter overview version, you know, we've got a really great YouTube channel. So Biasture 2, you can go online. You can see a lot of our videos. We've broken them out or categorized them by biome. And so many of these videos are short explanations by our researchers and our team is what's going on here. And you know, even follow us on social media. So, you know, we're active on all the platforms regularly posting and many of those posts come from the people who are doing the work in those systems highlighting what's going on that day or explaining a particular experiment. So I think all of these are great avenues to learn more about what we're doing or to continue to follow us on a daily basis. Thank you so much. That's great. Are there any books you would recommend to the patrons? I mean, people are always fascinated by the social, as I call it, the social experiment, that first phase of Biasture 2. So, you know, there are a number of, there are several books written by former Biasturing. And so one is Jane Pointer. Another is Mark Nelson. I would look them up. They've written a couple of them and their books are great. I've read them. I really enjoy them. And I think they give you their perspective on building this sort of really unique system. And I think those are relevant if you're really, again, wanting to understand sort of how Biasture 2 came to be. Now, if you don't have the time to read or maybe are looking for, you know, a video to watch, you know, a couple of things come to mind from that perspective is Spaceship Earth. So it debuted last year at the Sundance Festival. It is available, I believe, on Netflix. And it is a great documentary, much like the books by Jane and Mark Nelson and a few others sort of is a chronology of how it came to be in the team that built Biasture 2. The movie does a very similar thing. And, you know, it's a really interesting movie. And I think it shows how innovative and forward thinking this original group of eight people were that ultimately lived inside Biasture 2 and built Biasture 2. Yeah, it's actually on Hulu. And since we're on that topic really quick, I must ask, have you ever tried making the famous banana wine? I have not. I've eaten a lot of bananas and other fruits that we have inside, but no banana wine. And in fact, you know, when the Biasurians were living inside, if banana was a source, you know, a sweetener, in a sense, for them, but it didn't make banana. I haven't had their banana wine or tried to make it. I need to probably do that. It's probably should be one of those things on the bucket list. But, you know, another sort of thing, as I know, many of us are coffee drinkers. And, you know, there's sort of a little fact is that they did have coffee trees. They did produce beans, but it amounted to about a cup every two weeks, maybe maybe once a week per person. That was it. But just think about, you got to grow the beans you got to harvest the beans. You got to process the beans and you got to roast them and you got to grind them and you got to make coffee. And you hope that the person who's doing all of that or each one of those steps doesn't mess up because otherwise then that whole lot is gone. And we have taken some of those beans because we still harvest those down to a local shop here in Tucson. And they've processed some of this for in it. You know, it's good. I'm sure that was probably one of the sources of tension between the original biosphere residents. No, that's cool. It's good. You're absolutely right. I mean, so, you know, if we're all sitting here and, you know, Ryan, you and I are sitting across the table and, you know, Chris is, it's a cook for the day. Well, you know, Ryan's going to be looking at my plate. And if I got five beans and Ryan only got three beans, he's going to be pretty upset. I mean, those are the types of dynamics that were playing out early on when they were inside. I mean, again, sort of that classic human social psychological challenges that's been always has been well documented for a really long time. Yeah. And then they also had an oxygen shortage, I believe, right? And yeah. Yeah. 14.2% it went down to. And that's why they had to add it back in. And that, you know, they their cognitive abilities were severely compromised as a result of that. Well, I'll be looking out for the biosphere to brand wine and coffee in the future. A new marketing for us. And a new product. Thank you so much for your time, John Adams. We appreciate it. For our patrons and viewers, you can check, you can learn more about biosphere to by going to their website. And, you know, they're like, like John mentioned, there is a documentary about the earlier stages of biosphere to if you'd like to learn about that. And I also recommend checking out the app. The Biosphere to app. It's a really fun way to look at the all the biomes they have. Anything else you want to add, Ryan? I just wanted to say thank you so much for sharing your time with us and for telling us all about the amazing research and the amazing experiences that happen at biosphere to. It's fantastic. Well, I think both of you for this opportunity and your entire team for putting this together, we're really looking forward to it. And, you know, hopefully, you know, those who tune in and listen, you know, they'll sort of explore biosphere to more either virtually or maybe if they're here in Southern Arizona, you know, make a detour and come and visit us.