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, ...

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 ...

China's temporary helium export ban compounds global supply shortages that threaten semiconductor manufacturing, AI ...

China on Friday said it is temporarily blocking the export of helium, a key element for chipmaking, as the Iran war’s escalation adds to global supply disruptions. China’s commerce ministry and its ...

For most of scientific history, chemical elements were identified through materials that could be handled, heated, weighed or ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

Sophia E. Hayes and her research group at Washington University in St. Louis depend on liquid helium to cool the magnets in their nuclear magnetic resonance instruments to a superconducting ...

Helium is in short supply and it’s more than just the sellers of party balloons who should worry. This rare element is critical to medicine where ultra-low-temperature liquid helium is used to cool ...