Orbital Greenhouse
A small greenhouse on a space station: trays of herbs, a brass valve, and a round window with Earth turning beneath it. Brush the leaves and watch the ground go by.
Slow drift
Earth slides slowly past the window and the leaves stir in the airflow. Nothing flashes. Sound plays only if you start with it.
What you can do here
- Watch the ground go by
- Earth slides along the horizon the way it does from a low orbit: the clouds and sea nearest the station pass quickly, the ones out by the curve of the planet barely seem to move, and the thin blue line of the atmosphere stays where it is. Orbit slows it down or speeds it up.
- Brush the leaves
- Move across the beds and the leaves lean away from your hand, swing back once and settle. Airflow sets the ventilation breeze that keeps them stirring on their own.
- Open the valve
- Tap the brass valve. It hisses, and a pulse of water and bubbles runs down the clear channel. Water sets how fast the channel flows.
- Look for loose drops
- A few drops of water have escaped and float in the air, wobbling. Each is a tiny lens, so it shows the room behind it upside down.
Use it as your wallpaper
Press F for fullscreen and M to turn the sound off and on; the volume and your sound choice carry over to every wallpaper. The sound keeps playing if you switch to another tab.
Live link
https://whitescreen.tv/interactive-wallpapers/orbital-greenhouse/#wallpaper- On a computer desktop
- Some wallpaper apps can show a web page behind your desktop icons. Give one the live link above and the scene runs there on its own: no page around it, no ads and no sound.
- On a TV or a spare screen
- Open this page and press F, or use Fullscreen. While it’s in fullscreen we ask the browser to keep the screen from going to sleep.
- On a phone or tablet
- Save image downloads exactly what’s on the screen as a picture. Set it as your wallpaper from your photos; the phone will crop the sides.
A live wallpaper keeps a page running all day. Through the live link the scene draws at most 30 frames a second and stops while the screen is covered, but on a laptop it still costs some battery.
Why a greenhouse in orbit needs fans
On Earth, warm air rises and cool air sinks, so the air around a leaf keeps changing by itself. Without weight, warm air doesn’t rise at all, and a still pocket of air builds up around each leaf, short of the carbon dioxide it needs. That is why plant growth chambers on the International Space Station blow a constant gentle breeze over the plants, and why the leaves here never quite stop moving.
How fast the ground really goes
The International Space Station flies about 250 miles up and goes around Earth roughly every 90 minutes, at about 17,500 miles an hour. That is fast enough for sixteen sunrises a day, yet from the window the ground near the horizon only crawls, because it is so far away. Even at the top of the Orbit slider the view here is gentler than the real one.
About the sounds
Two recordings and one quiet layer: the hum of water circulating through the trays, the valve opening, and the air of a sealed station. The Water slider raises the circulation; Airflow raises the air.
If you’d rather just watch
Picture and sounds generated from our prompts. Motion, controls and mix by WhiteScreen.tv.
