You probably don’t spend much time thinking about nitrogen. If you do, maybe you think of it as a pollutant. Fertilizer running off farm fields, livestock manure giving off ammonia, and burning fossil fuels all add nitrogen to the environment. This nitrogen contributes to the... click to read more

Unlike our own Blue Planet, Mars is currently too cold to sustain liquid water at its surface. At first glance, Mars 4 billion years ago should have been even colder. Back then, the Sun's brightness was only about 70% of what it is today. Yet... click to read more

How did planets arise? How did the Earth become a unique planet with a habitable surface? A way to address these long-standing questions is to explore the "small bodies" of the Solar System. In addition to the planets and the satellites circuiting around them, our... click to read more

Nitrogen is required by all living things, but too much of it can be a problem for aquatic ecosystems. Excess reactive nitrogen (nitrate and ammonium, forms that can be used directly by plants and algae) can cause lake eutrophication which can include harmful algal blooms,... click to read more