Carol Potenza
New Mexico Mysteries
N2 gas literally bathes us inside and out because air is 78% N2 (5). Wait. Isn’t the air we breathe oxygen? Around 21% of it is, just like your middle school science teacher told you. And though we breathe N2 in, we don’t need it and exhale it out unchanged. But N can be chemically modified with both positive and deadly consequences.
An asteroid as large as 50 miles across hits what we now call the Yucatan, vaporizes in the 20,000-degree heat caused by the energy of the collision, catches pretty much everything on fire for 100s of miles, creates tsunamis as tall as the Eiffel tower, pitches the world into darkness for a year because of debris and dust thrown into the sky, and completely wipes out the dinosaurs.
Calcium (Ca), Lovers’ Graves, and the Periodic Table of Death Think of Calcium as life’s structural support element. It’s the fifth most common element in the earth’s crust but easily forms compounds (1). In fact, about 99% of Ca found in our bodies is built into our bones as a complex and complicated mineral component that approximates this formula—Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2 (2). When we toddle off this mortal plane and elect to be buried whole, the carbon-based organic portion of our bodies can become nutrition for other living creatures (e.g., bacteria, fungi. Bears.). But consumption tends to stop at the hard crunchy middle, …
