Fertilizer from atmospheric nitrogen? Reseachers say ‘possible’.

In California, scientists with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have made a key discovery that would possibly allow for capturing atmospheric nitrogen for fertilizer.  The discovery used an intense beam of X-rays from the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource to identify a hidden atom at the heart of the enzyme called nitrogenase, which plays a critical role in converting nitrogen into a form living things can use.  The key atom turned out to be carbon.