130 Feet Above the Amazon Rainforest, Scientists Sample the Last Pristine Air on Earth
The Amazon Rainforest, Manaus, Brazil Take a deep breath. via io9 The full ramifications of the Industrial Revolution on this planet may never be known, not because the scope of the those changes can't be measured but because the same rapid, spastic technological changes that hurled industry forward into a new era did the same for science. As such, pre-industrial science didn't possess many of the instruments and technologies that allow modern science to happen. So how do you, say, find out what air quality was like before the Revolution wrecked it? You climb up into the canopy in the remotest part of the Amazon rainforest and take a deep breath. That's exactly what an international team of researchers recently did in order to get a sample of what air was like before human activity crowded it with particulate pollution. Deep in the Amazon Basin of Manaus, Brazil, the team climbed up...