• UCLA-led study may explain the source of nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere (UCLA)

The way so many elements like to go to gas when heated the slightest bit is a bit problematic. Our own Earth has an atmosphere made of these kinds of materials – Nitrogen, Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen – And we know that early on in our planet’s history, our world was so hot that all these elements should have gone away. Over the years, we’ve figured out how oxygen and carbon dioxide probably came back to Earth on comets and asteroids . Nitrogen had two origins – dredged up or collided into Earth – but sorting which option has proven hard. In this new work, led by Edward Young, scientists collected gases from volcanoes,very carefully, and looked at the compositions. They found that the gases coming out of volcanoes were consistent with atmospheric gases and it appears that nitrogen was brought back to Earth and then added into the planet so that it could come back out later. Essentially, our world is a giant nitrogen recycler.

So – that nitrogen that makes up 78% of the gas we breathe is nitrogen from impactors not nitrogen from the primordial Earth.