Roman mining pollution Mediterranean Industrial Revolution

Roman mines polluted the atmosphere long before modern factories

Large-scale metal mining and smelting in the Roman world released lead and other pollutants into the air. Scientists can detect traces of ancient emissions in environmental records such as ice cores. Industrial pollution is not exclusively modern: some ancient economies left measurable chemical signatures far from the mines that produced them.

A favored farming doctrine cut crop yields

Lysenkoism was a pseudoscientific doctrine that Soviet leaders favored over genetics. When put into practice, it reduced crop yields in the Soviet Union and China and is widely believed to have contributed to the Great Chinese Famine.

Adaptive optics can sharpen telescope images

Earth’s atmosphere blurs images taken by telescopes. Adaptive optics measures and corrects this distortion, letting telescopes produce images much closer to the sharpness their size should allow.

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Roman mining pollution Mediterranean Industrial Revolution

Roman mines polluted the atmosphere long before modern factories

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