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A comment on A sealed bottle garden thriving after 40 years without fresh air or water. Parent comment

Re:A sealed bottle garden thriving after 40 years without fr... by mathattack on Friday June 06, 2014 @11:06AM (#7858284)
Was this a planned hack, or does this naturally occur?

My first thought was also, "Where does the CO2 come from?"

I suspect this is a very fine balance - if you're off by just a little, one or the other would die. There's not much room for error in a jar.

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Re:A sealed bottle garden thriving after 40 years without fr... by duaneb on Friday June 06, 2014 @11:48AM (#7858581)
> I suspect this is a very fine balance - if you're off by just a little, one or the other would die.

This is an illusion; it's a dialectic between the two. Problems lead to a shift in balance, not a death.

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Re:A sealed bottle garden thriving after 40 years without fr... by windsurfer on Friday June 06, 2014 @11:26AM (#7858442)
Most bacteria and plants can survive in a huge range of CO2 and O2 concentrations. Humans are the ones that cannot.
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Re:A sealed bottle garden thriving after 40 years without fr... by runeks on Friday June 06, 2014 @03:47PM (#7859961)
> I suspect this is a very fine balance - if you're off by just a little, one or the other would die. There's not much room for error in a jar.

Why would all bacteria die if there is less oxygen? I imagine the weakest bacteria would die, thereby increasing the amount of O2 per bacteria, and thus reaching equilibrium again.

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Re:A sealed bottle garden thriving after 40 years without fr... by gwern on Friday June 06, 2014 @01:51PM (#7859350)
> There's not much room for error in a jar.

Article mentions that most of the jars failed.

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