Visualizing Our Biosphere

Buckminster Fuller (credit: Dan Lindsay]

Buckminster Fuller, the renowned 20th Century architect, was almost a victim of his own success. He developed many inventions, primarily building designs, and popularized the well known geodesic domes. Fuller identified unique carbon molecules that chemists later called fullerenes for their structural resemblance to his domes.

The geodesic domes could enclose more space, with less material, than any other contemporary architectural design. Like mushrooms they popped-up all across natural landscapes after their invention. The domes almost became pop icons of a crazy inventor. But their oddness---seemingly the work of a wild dreamer---pigeonholed Fuller. He was actually a deep thinker on many more subjects than spherical designs.

Adam Savage of Mythbusters remembers something Fuller once said and then demonstrated. It was a way to explain the fragility of the Earth's biosphere in one minute. WHB

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