Io Blog Options

[volcanopele]

Just let you all know about a new blog I've started called The Gish Bar Times located at http://gishbar.blogspot.com/ . I intend to use the blog to cover Io-related news like new papers or abstracts, developments with the flagship mission selection process, newly processed images, volcano news, or pretty photos taken of Io and Jupiter. I hope you all enjoy!

[Juramike]

Here is a handy reference regarding elemental sulfur and planetary geology:
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntr..._1982025583.pdf

And of course, to keep the pure sulfur allotropes apart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_sulfur

(I've used S8 before, and it was stinky, but this may have been due to trace impurities generated during the reaction.)


In general, sulfur and thiol compounds do stink. Each has there own, uhhhh, particular characteristic aroma. The really high molecular weight ones don't volatilize. Naphthyl-thiol is stink free, but benzene thiol will stink quite nicely - enough to clear a lab.

Amines can also stink (fishy odor)

Pyridines also stink (dead seaweed odor, you get used to it, but it will cause impotence).

Acrylonitrile (a significant component on Titan) will bring tears to your eyes. It is a lachrymator.
(Yours truly evacuated a lab accidentally with the similar compound acrolein. It took me 3 hours to quit crying.)

Your best bang for your buck for smell factor comes with isocyanides and phosphines. Those are just plain vile.
They have a unique smell all to their own. It is hard to describe, but once you've smelled it, you'll respect it. Spills of those materials are enough to evacuate a building (they are also pretty toxic.)

But in general, smell is difficult to talk about on Io. Your nasal receptors detect things that have diffused to it, and absorbed onto the receptor itself (a pseudoaqueous environment). If you ever smelled Io directly, you'd be dead (no pressure). If you brought Io stuff back to Earth and put it in a lab, it would be able to react with ambient oxygen and water to generate trace compounds (such as volatile sulfides) that your nose would likely find offensive. The critical thing is that you would be need to expose Io stuff to a new aqueous and oxygen-rich environment in order to smell it.

[PFK]

, but benzene thiol will stink quite nicely - enough to clear a lab.

Agreed, one of the worst - and not only is it bad, I find it comes back to haunt you. Later that day, I find any other smell, even nice ones, just manifest themselves as its reappearance. Trouble is, its quite useful for us.
Bis(trimethylsilyl)sulfide is an interesting one as its pretty volatile and smells exactly like natural gas. I know sulfur additives are put in the latter, but something about this one just gets people reporting gas leaks. "Best" one we had was when I was at Imperial and an undergraduate project student vented 10s of g up and out of the fume cupboard and the gas people got called out not only locally, but in Bayswater - which if you know your London is on the other side of Hyde Park!
Drop down the chalcogens to get the real swines though - organo selenium and tellurium stuff leaves the lab with a characteristic "presence", not helped by the fact that if the people working in it have taken it onboard then they leach it out as Me2Se etc, which makes them smell like they've just done a 24hr shift in a garlic factory I remember getting some byproduct of an organo selenocyanate reaction down my shirt and having to hang it on the washing line for two weeks to fumigate before I even dared hand wash it!
More pertinently, does any chemistry of the latter heavier elements manifest itself on Io or elsewhere? I seem to recall some notion that there were tellurium deposits on Venus, but I don't know whether that notion is still in fashion?
Another question that is directly relevant to what we do research-wise comes with the interaction of sulfur with nitrogen. I've worked with sulfur nitrides for decades (and happily still have a full compliment of fingers despite S4N4, S5N6 etc being significantly explosive) and non are naturally occuring on earth (though I'm sure some form during volcanic events etc, but they are not stable enough to end up appearing in geological samples). But I do know of a report of spectroscopic identification of the simplest one, NS, in a comet's make up. The low temperature will stabilise it no doubt, but it will be reactive and the latter fact could manifest itself in significant addition to the overall chemistry going on in low temperature sulfur/nitrogen rich environments. But I wonder if any other evidence for such species in environments such as Io has been gathered - I'd be fascinated to know.

[stevesliva]

I remember getting some byproduct of an organo selenocyanate reaction down my shirt and having to hang it on the washing line for two weeks to fumigate before I even dared hand wash it!

This must be what my dog likes to roll in when I take her hiking.