A new form of Sulfur, the sixth most abundant element on earth has been identified in geological fluids. Earth already contains a lot of sulfur in rocks, mines in various forms but this is something new observed for the very first time.
The new form identified contains S3- ions whilst the existing forms contrain S2^-1 ions or SO4 ^ -2 ions. This was believed as physicists only had access to the rocks containing these two forms only and could never analyze fluids inside the earth. However, to test indirectly those fluids, they were synthesized manually in laboratory and the similar conditions of temperature & pressure were analyzed. A diamond anvil was used for this purpose.
A special spectroscopy technique was then used to analyze the resulting compounds and a surprisingly, something new appeared in the analysis, the S3- ion. The ion itself aint new but the presence in geological fluids was the major surprise.
The compounds containing these ions are believed to be quite stable and spread across the earth in huge quantities
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