Remarks on the Band Spectrum of Sulfur and the Statistics of the Sulfur Nucleus

A few years ago Naudé and Christy (1) examined the fine structure of five of the bands of diatomic sulfur in the near ultraviolet and made an analysis of them from which they calculated that in the normal state of the sulfur molecule the internuclear distance is 1.603A. If this result were correct it would appear that the sulfur molecule were very abnormal since a distance somewhat greater than 1.8A is predicted by several rules, including the covalent bond radii and an empirical rule by the author (2) by which internuclear distances can be calculated by vibrational frequencies.