Unique Features of Helium

Up, Up, And Away

Inhaling helium causes your voice to squeak and makes balloons float higher in the air, which is what most people are familiar with. But helium is more than just a source of entertainment: it is also a valuable industrial resource with applications in technology and medicine, and scientists are still discovering more about its many strange properties.

Compared To Air, It Is Lighter

Because of the chemical stability of helium atoms and the extremely small size of single helium atoms, helium is one of the lightest and least dense of all the chemical elements. The low density of helium is what causes balloons filled with the gas to float, buoyed up by the denser surrounding air, which causes them to float.

Below The Surface of The Water

The fact that helium is easily compressed and non-toxic means that it is used in specialised “breathing mixtures” of gases for very deep scuba diving, where it is used to replace the nitrogen that accounts for approximately 75% of our atmosphere.

When exposed to high pressures, such as those found underwater below 100 feet (30 metres), dissolved nitrogen can quickly accumulate in body tissues, resulting in fatal decompression illness or dangerous bouts of “nitrogen narcosis,” which is a condition that is similar to being suddenly and severely drunk.

Dive technicians and commercial divers who dive to depths of up to 400 feet (122 metres) or beyond use breathing mixtures such as “heliox” to avoid the problems associated with breathing nitrogen. Heliox is a mixture in which a portion of the nitrogen in the air has been replaced with helium.

Providing Energy for The Sun

Helium makes up approximately 45 percent of the mass of the sun, where it is formed at extremely high temperatures through the fusion of hydrogen — the primary process that keeps the sun and all of the stars burning — and other elements.

Helium gets its name from “Helios,” the Greek god of the sun, and it was discovered in the 1860s by astronomers who were studying the “gas absorption lines” of the colour spectrum of sunlight, which were unique to the element.

Helium makes up approximately 45 percent of the mass of the sun, where it is formed at extremely high temperatures through the fusion of hydrogen — the primary process that keeps the sun and all of the stars burning — and other elements.

Helium atoms are fused together in stars to form the heavier elements such as carbon, oxygen, and silicon as a result of this process.

Over The Moon

Helium-3 has been discovered in large quantities on the moon, where helium from the solar wind has been raining down on the lunar surface for billions of years, according to NASA.

The nucleus of the majority of helium atoms contains two protons and two neutron particles, resulting in an isotope known as Helium-4. However, some of them combine to form Helium-3, an isotope with two protons and only one neutron that has been proposed as an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion power generation.

Helium-3 is a rare and exotic element on Earth. However, it has been discovered in large quantities on the moon, where helium from the solar wind has been raining down on the lunar surface for billions of years and has been detected in large quantities. In recent years, Helium-3 has been proposed as a potential payoff for lunar exploration by several space agencies, including those in Russia, China, and India.

Super Cool

Despite the fact that Helium gas is extremely cold, it condenses into a liquid at extremely low temperatures of around minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 268 degrees Celsius) when subjected to atmospheric pressure, and exhibits strange behaviour at even lower temperatures.

At temperatures below minus 456 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 271 degrees Celsius), just a few degrees above absolute zero, helium-4 transforms into a so-called superfluid, with a density about one-eighth that of water and no friction. One of the many strange properties of superfluid helium is its ability to quickly flow through any leak and even upwards along the walls of a container, making it extremely difficult to keep it from escaping. 

Inner Vision

Observation of one’s own inner vision

Given that helium is easy to melt and liquefy at such low temperatures, it is used as a coolant for high-capacity superconducting electromagnets, such as those used in the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.

Liquid helium is also used to cool the ring-shaped magnetic coils in hospital MRI scanners to temperatures of about minus 441 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 263 degrees Celsius), which allows them to generate brief but intense magnetic fields. Liquid helium is also used to cool the ring-shaped magnetic coils in hospital MRI scanners to temperatures of about minus 441 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 263 degrees C).

As a result of the magnetic fields, atoms within the body resonate with their own magnetic signatures, which can be detected by the scanner and used to create a detailed image of internal organs and tissues.

Conclusion

Inhaling helium causes your voice to squeak and makes balloons float higher in the air, which is what most people are familiar with. But helium is more than just a source of entertainment. Because of the chemical stability of helium atoms and the extremely small size of single helium atoms, helium is one of the lightest and least dense of all the chemical elements. The fact that helium is easily compressed and non-toxic means that it is used in specialised “breathing mixtures” of gases for very deep scuba diving, where it is used to replace the nitrogen that accounts for approximately 75% of our atmosphere. Helium makes up approximately 45 percent of the mass of the sun, where it is formed at extremely high temperatures through the fusion of hydrogen. Helium-3 has been discovered in large quantities on the moon, where helium from the solar wind has been raining down on the lunar surface for billions of years, according to NASA.