Significance of Sulfur in Volcanoes and Hot Springs

This question, in my view, has never been answered adequately. Most often than not it is that sulfur deposits are mostly deep under earth crust. Through volcano eruptions, or the hot springs, it was brought up to the surface.

There is this possibility that sulfur is actually still being produced, and yes, deep underground. This process is the fusion of alpha particles and silicon atoms 14Si28 to sulfur 16S32. The process is speculative until its production cross-section can be experimentally verified.

We all know that silicon atoms are everywhere, even deep under earth crust. Question is where are alpha particles from, and the answer is from uranium decays. If you ever wonder why our earth, after 4 billion years, is not stone cold, and instead is still molten on the inside? One of the theories is that there exist huge amount of uranium in earth core and decay of uranium atoms is what is keeping earth core molten. Given that uranium decay chain produces a total of eight alpha particles there could be plenty of supply for fusion with Silicon atoms.


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *