Scientists explain nitrogen-rich atmosphere of Earth with plate tectonics

Earth, unlike its neighbor planets Venus and Mars, has 78% nitrogen in its atmosphere. Our current day atmosphere is a result of billions of years of photosynthesis by plants, but that only increased the amount of oxygen to almost 20% of atmosphere, but why there is too much nitrogen in the atmosphere is still not understood well.

Now scientists try to explain abundance of nitrogen with plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is the reason for mountains and also volcanoes, when volcano erupts it does bring lot of deep earth stuffs into the surface of earth.

Gases like sulfur, carbon dioxide and nitrogen are the gases usually comes out of volcanic eruption.

Scientists say that nitrogen is locked into the silicate rocks in the earth’s crust. When this silicate rocks interact with oxygen based compounds, they break into water (H2O) and nitrogen (N2). This nitrogen then came out of volcanic eruption to the atmosphere.

This is why Mars and Venus have little nitrogen because they don’t have plate tectonics.

Read more at arstechnica

Image: NOAA via arstechnica

The thinnest phone yet, Oppo R5

Oppo R5 is the world's thinnest smart phone! With just 4.85 mm thickness, this phone just looks like metal plate.

The phone features Qualcomm's Snapdragon 615 chipset with octa-core running at 1.5Ghz. The phone also comes with 2 GB of RAM and has full HD screen (1920x1080). It also has 13MP Sony rear camera and 5MP front camera.

R5 only comes with 2000 mAh battery, most probably due to the slim size. It also has only 16 GB internal storage and no SD card slot.

Whether this phone too prone to bendgate is yet to be tested! Well the phone goes on sale in December and available off contract at $499 USD.

Source & Image: engadget