{"id":239656,"date":"2026-06-26T06:03:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T11:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/astrochemical-model-digs-into-the-universes-missing-sulfur"},"modified":"2026-06-26T06:03:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T11:03:42","slug":"astrochemical-model-digs-into-the-universes-missing-sulfur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/astrochemical-model-digs-into-the-universes-missing-sulfur","title":{"rendered":"Astrochemical model digs into the universe\u2019s missing sulfur"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astrochemical-model-digs-into-the-universes-missing-sulfur.webp\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sulfur is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. If you peer into a diffuse interstellar cloud, you find loads of it\u2014about the amount expected based on fusion patterns in the stars it was born in. However, if you look at a dense, cold molecular cloud\u2014the kind where those stars actually form\u2014it seems like 99% of the sulfur expected to be there is missing. Scientists have puzzled over this \u201cmissing sulfur problem\u201d for decades, though a leading theory is that the element hides in icy dust grains, making it hard to detect.<\/p>\n<p>A new paper published in Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Centro de Astrobiologia describes a new computer simulation model aimed at supporting the interpretation of laboratory results and testing our current understanding of sulfur evolution in interstellar ices.<\/p>\n<p>The simulation was written in pyRate\u2014a Python-based application that calculates how chemicals interact, especially between ice and gas phases. The paper marks the first successful model of the chemistry of a multicomponent interstellar ice analog with a rate-equation simulation. Scientists love \u201cfirsts,\u201d but what does that actually mean in practice in this case?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sulfur is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. If you peer into a diffuse interstellar cloud, you find loads of it\u2014about the amount expected based on fusion patterns in the stars it was born in. However, if you look at a dense, cold molecular cloud\u2014the kind where those stars actually form\u2014it seems [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1523,41,219,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-computing","category-information-science","category-physics","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}