ORACLE, Ariz. — Plopped in the Sonoran Desert, just outside Tucson, Ariz., sits a massive, multilevel greenhouse that's probably best known as the inspiration for a Pauly Shore movie. A slick, stepped ...

Nestled in the foothills of the Catalina Mountains, around 31 miles from Tucson, there exists an oasis; a collection of environments one would never anticipate to exist in the scorched Arizona desert.

ORACLE, Ariz.—Opening the door to a glass pyramid, a visitor steps from the arid heat of Arizona into a coastal fog desert that stretches toward a savanna. A Lilliputian ocean laps against a rocky ...

Almost 30 years ago, eight researchers entered a glass-walled recreation of Earth's collective ecosystems out in the Arizona desert and didn't emerge for two years as part of a radical experiment. In ...

Thirty years ago last month, on Sept. 26, 1993, a group of eight weary, visionary adventurers “returned” to Earth after two years of living together in a miniature version of our world — a ...