Always impressive

[Mauro]

Silicon: A component of explosives used in the automotive industry to trigger airbags.

But just so that you won't fall asleep easily at night, the mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, and water vapor in the atmosphere is thermodynamically unstable. Those substances should react spontaneously to form nitric acid HNO3, with release of energy.  That does not happen only because the N2 molecule is extremely hard to crack.  But if someone somewhere found a suitable catalyst...

All the best atmosphere, while we have one -- stolfi

Very tangential, but in a novel of John W. Campbell, I think You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., the evil guys develop 'the catalyst' and set Earth atmosphere on fire. The novel itself is rather bad, be warned