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, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I cover chemistry, from its small molecules to its big questions. Amid political and economic turmoil, Qatar has closed its two ...

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 ...

THE history of the discovery of helium presents some features of unusual dramatic interest. During an eclipse in 1868, Jansen and Lockyer noticed that the visual spectrum of the sun's chromosphere ...

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 ...

Helium, a noble gas, was long believed to be 'too aloof' to react with the other elements on the periodic table. Now, however, scientists have provided a theoretical explanation of how helium may be ...

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, ...

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 ...

The inner mantles of icy giant planets such as Uranus and Neptune are mainly composed by water, ammonia and methane, while their atmospheres are made of hydrogen and helium. Under high pressures ...

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 ...

Helium is the second-most common element in the universe, but it's comparatively rare on Earth. It also fulfills a surprising role in everything from space exploration to quantum computing. Short Wave ...

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 ...