What is helium used for, and where does it come from? Learn facts about this noble gas, including how it causes balloons to float, its surprising uses in medicine and exploration, and how its limited availability on Earth could affect science and industry.
Transcript
Most people know Helium as the lighter-than-air gas that fills our party balloons, but more importantly, it’s an irreplaceable element for science and industry.
Helium was discovered in 1868 during a solar eclipse.
Astronomers observed a yellow light in the sun’s corona and couldn’t explain it with any known elements at the time. Their observations turned out to be the first sightings of a new element.
And given its discovery near the sun, this element was named after the Greek god of the sun, Helios.
Helium is the 2nd lightest element – second only to hydrogen. It’s located near the top of the periodic table, coming in at atomic number 2 -- meaning it has 2 protons in its core.
It’s usually found in gas form, but turns into liquid below -452 degrees Fahrenheit.
Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, created during the Big Bang and found in stars, planets, even our own moon. However, it’s relatively rare on Earth.
On our planet, it forms as a gaseous byproduct/result of ancient uranium that’s decayed over billions of years and is trapped beneath the Earth’s surface. It’s harvested from natural gas reserves and can’t be artificially produced, making helium a non-renewable resource on our planet.
Helium has a variety of applications, largely due to its unique characteristics.
It’s a noble gas, so it’s less likely to interact with other elements.
When mixed with neon, helium can create low power lasers used to scan barcodes at checkout counters. When mixed with oxygen in a high pressure environment, helium allows deep sea divers to breathe in the air from their oxygen tanks more easily.
And since helium has a low boiling point, it’s useful in extremely cold temperatures.
Because of this, it can cool some of the most powerful electromagnets on Earth, including the Large Hadron Collider.
While helium can be applied in seemingly countless ways, its availability is finite.
Because it’s lightweight, when helium is released in the atmosphere, it floats into space and is lost to Earth forever.
