Manoj Kumar, postdoctoral researcher in chemistry, and Joseph Francisco, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, have published a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study proposes a new explanation for the chemical formation of sulfur-based aerosols, whose presence in Earth’s early atmosphere may have contributed to the development of life. Though researchers have generally believed that sulfur particles arise from the breakdown of sulfur gases by ultraviolet light, Kumar and Francisco performed calculations suggesting that water or sulfuric acid can drive this formation by catalyzing chemical reactions between sulfur oxide and hydrogen sulfide. The researchers ran their calculations with support from the university’s Holland Computing Center.
