Slide 33 of 49

Nitrogen is a crucial element for the existence of life. However, in its native gaseous form, nitrogen is virtually inert and essentially unusable by living organisms. However, thanks to the nature of our atmosphere during electrical storms, nitrogen gets "fixed" by combination with oxygen in the atmosphere. Although nitrogen fixation is now primarily a function of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, electrical fixation of nitrogen was an important function during the early history of the Earth.