The X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) spacecraft has delivered an "unprecedented tally of elemental sulfur spread between the stars," according to NASA.
00:00Sulfur. It's the fifth most common element on Earth.
00:05It also helped make our early world habitable and allows life to function now.
00:10But scientists have a lot of questions about where it hides in interstellar space.
00:17Using the CRISM satellite, astronomers have now x-rayed our galaxy's sulfur in unprecedented detail.
00:27Out in the vastness of space is the interstellar medium, the gas and dust between the stars.
00:36Scientists see lots of sulfur as gas in molecular clouds, cold, dense patches of the medium where stars and planets are born.
00:46But this type of sulfur tends to disappear quickly. Where does it go?
00:52To find out, scientists picked a region of gas and dust that wasn't too thin or too thick.
01:00Then they picked a bright x-ray source behind the patch so that the light would pass through it on its way to CRISM.
01:08This is like getting an x-ray here on Earth, but instead of the light being absorbed by tissue and bone, it's absorbed by different elements, like sulfur.
01:17CRISM showed scientists that sulfur in the interstellar medium can be found as both a gas and as a solid, and possibly mixed with iron.
01:26This aligns with studies of meteorites and may help explain how sulfur moves through the cosmos.
01:32It's also the first direct measurement of sulfur in both solid and gas phases.
01:38Thanks to CRISM, we're a step closer to understanding how life on our planet came to be.
01:47Accompl tác.
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01:49axis.
01:50Sin.
01:51Hence how?
01:52It tells us how the atmosphere of the main surface is.
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