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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsNot yet—but a 2025 University of Copenhagen project proposes testing whether crystallizing sulfur could trap xenon. The idea offers a possible piece of the explanation for why planetary atmospheres contain far less xenon than expected; it remains a hypothesis, not a demonstrated cause.
What is the missing xenon paradox?
Xenon is unusually scarce in the atmospheres of Earth, Venus and Mars compared with what cosmochemical models would lead researchers to expect. The mismatch is striking because other noble gases do not show the same depletion pattern.
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A 2026 review by Avinash Kumar Both, Avradip Ghosh and Chin Li Cheung reports that Earth’s atmospheric xenon is depleted by a factor of 4.8 × 104 relative to solar composition. The review also reports a factor of 3.3 × 104 depletion for krypton, citing Dauphas (2003). These are figures reported in the review from earlier work, not new measurements made in 2026. The difference between the two values is part of the puzzle: xenon appears especially difficult to account for.
How could sulfur trap xenon?
Villum Fonden’s 2025 project description proposes that sulfur’s changing structure while molten might create opportunities for xenon to become trapped as sulfur crystallizes. The project is led by Jesper Bendix at the University of Copenhagen. It describes a research plan, not a confirmed discovery.
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Why sulfur’s structure matters
Solid sulfur commonly forms S8 rings, which the project description says are too small to encapsulate xenon. Molten sulfur, however, can contain changing chains and rings. The researchers propose that this structural variety could act like a “dynamic combinatorial library”: xenon might help template sulfur arrangements that can persist as the melt crystallizes.
What the project plans to test
The proposed work includes crystallizing sulfur under pressure, characterizing the resulting structures and computationally screening sulfur arrangements for favorable xenon binding. The project page does not report a stable xenon-bearing sulfur structure or show that the mechanism operated in Earth’s crust. Establishing that sulfur can bind xenon in an experiment would be an important first result, not proof that it accounts for Earth’s missing xenon.
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Where else might the missing xenon have gone?
The sulfur proposal is one candidate among explanations that place xenon in different reservoirs or move it through different processes. The 2026 review treats the paradox as unresolved and discusses multiple possibilities; more than one mechanism may be needed to explain both the elemental shortage and xenon’s isotopic patterns.
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Escape from the atmosphere
Some explanations focus on atmospheric evolution and loss to space, including interactions with the solar wind. These processes would remove xenon from a planet’s atmosphere rather than store it in a hidden geological reservoir.
Storage inside the planet
Xenon could also have been sequestered during planetary formation or differentiation, including in the mantle or core. A 2022 study of pre-subduction deep-mantle material found it depleted in xenon relative to krypton and chondrites. The authors discuss core partitioning, magma-ocean outgassing and a xenon deficit in Earth’s parent bodies as possible explanations that may have acted together. This concerns the interior xenon inventory; it does not establish sulfur as the host.
High-pressure compounds
A 2013 study in Nature Chemistry predicted that xenon oxides could be stable above particular pressures: XeO above 83 GPa, XeO2 above 102 GPa and XeO3 above 114 GPa. These are theoretical stability thresholds, not measurements showing that the compounds make up a natural Earth reservoir. The study also concluded that the oxides are unstable in equilibrium with metallic iron in the lower mantle, while noting possible retention at defects in mantle silicates and oxides.
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Possible biological processes
The 2026 review also surveys possible biological processes among proposed explanations. Their inclusion in a review of candidate mechanisms does not establish that they account for the atmospheric deficit.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11What evidence would make the sulfur idea convincing?
The key is to connect a laboratory or computational result to a plausible geological reservoir. Evidence would need to show that xenon-bearing sulfur structures are stable under relevant conditions, and then support the case that such structures could form and retain enough xenon in nature to matter to the planetary inventory.
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- High Purity Sulfur
- Solid Sulfur
- Elemental Sulfur
- Show binding: experimental characterization or computational results should identify sulfur structures that bind xenon stably, rather than simply detect a transient interaction in molten sulfur.
- Match geological conditions: the conditions needed to form and preserve those structures must be relevant to the proposed natural setting.
- Connect the mechanism to the inventory: a defensible estimate or geological evidence must show that sulfur storage could account for a meaningful share of the missing xenon.
- Fit the broader pattern: the explanation should be assessed against xenon’s depletion relative to other noble gases and the observed isotopic evidence, alongside other possible mechanisms.
Villum Fonden says, “Validating xenon’s interaction with sulfur could inform new extraction and recovery strategies.” That statement is conditional on validation; it does not demonstrate a recovery method or resolve the planetary paradox.
What the proposed solution means so far
Sulfur capture is a testable new candidate, not a solution established by results. The missing xenon paradox remains open, and the current explanations may involve a combination of atmospheric loss, planetary differentiation, interior storage and other processes.
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