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Living things need nitrogen, whether you're a giraffe or a bacterium living two miles underground gathering your energy from the radioactive decay of rocks.
Nitrogen is non-negotiable for the chemical processes that make life work.
Amino acids, RNA, DNA, and chlorophyll all contain nitrogen.
But even though most of our atmosphere is nitrogen, it's completely inaccessible to most kinds of living things.
Which begs the question: what?
For years, scientists have been asking how nitrogen-dependent life could ever have gotten started in this scenario of "water, water everywhere".
But now there may be an answer, and it is, obviously, volcanoes.
Nearly 80% of Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen gas, which is two nitrogen molecules stuck together by not one, not two, but three chemical bonds.
