Scientists Release Air Trapped 800 Million Years Ago

(via Popular Mechanics) We can’t go back in time to sample the oxygen content of prehistoric air. But now it looks like we won’t have to, as scientists from Brock University have announced they’ve managed to collect samples of ancient air that was trapped in tiny rock bubbles.  The team of scientists led by Nigel Blamey found tiny bubbles of air from around 800 million years ago trapped in samples of halite, which is the rock version of table salt. The scientists crushed the samples, releasing the air, which they ran through a machine called a quadrupole mass spectrometer.