The existence of the 27 bonding and 27 antibonding spin orbital coupling superoxide states dissociating to (3) P(O) + (2) P(O(-) ) is established from mass analyzed thermal, photon, and electron ionization data. There are electron affinities from 0 to 0.15 eV, and onsets and peaks for dissociative electron attachment that cannot be explained by the 54 states. These support the existence of the 36 superoxide spin states dissociating to [(1) D(O) + (2) P(O(-) )] and [(1) S(O) + (2) P(O(-) )] predicted by quantum mechanics. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.