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 ...

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 ...

The world’s known helium reserves just ballooned. Applying gas-finding techniques from the oil industry, scientists uncovered a vast reservoir of more than a trillion liters of helium gas beneath ...

Did you realize that just like certain animals here on Earth, there are endangered elements, too? For example, we’re constantly losing helium, a gas that defies gravity and escapes our atmosphere into ...

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, ...

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, ...

Helium, the second-lightest element in the universe, has a variety of uses, from keeping balloons afloat to cooling superconducting magnets. It is also a noble gas — so labeled because it was long ...

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 ...

Immediately after the Big Bang, before the first stars in the Universe ever formed, the Universe consisted of hydrogen (element #1), helium (element #2) and pretty much nothing else. Despite ...