One of the most remarkable facts of existence is that every material we’ve ever touched, seen, or interacted with is made up of the same two things: atomic nuclei, which are positively charged, and ...

Population III (PopIII) stars represent astronomy's ultimate prize: the first generation of stars born from the pristine hydrogen and helium created in the Big Bang. These theoretical giants, ...

Which is your favourite chemical element? To mark the International Year of the Periodic Table, our science journalists will be arguing for their pick from the 118 known elements. In this instalment, ...

Discovered in the 1800s in the solar spectrum, helium has been an element that has eluded humans for centuries. Despite being listed as one of the most abundant elements in the universe, this noble ...

Scientists have understood for some time that the most abundant elements in the Universe are simple gases like hydrogen and helium. These make up the vast majority of its observable mass, dwarfing all ...

Throughout the mid-1800s, improvements on the spectroscope allowed physicists to more accurately measure the wavelengths of light and identify new elements—like helium. Wikimedia Commons “I have ...

Amid political and economic turmoil, Qatar has closed its two helium production plants, Reuters reports. Qatar is the world’s second-biggest producer of helium, the gaseous element that sits at the ...

Jon Gluyas received funding from Statoil to undertake this research and Helium-One provided funds to collaborators to undertake sampling of the gases in Tanzania and their subsequent analysis. Helium ...

A global helium shortage has doctors worried about one of the natural gas’s most essential, and perhaps unexpected, uses: MRIs. Strange as it sounds, the lighter-than-air element that gives balloons ...

Helium comes from the Greek word for sun, helios. That connection to the sun is the reason why, for nearly three decades after it was first observed, chemists dismissed the element that we use today ...