Helium (from ) is a chemical element; it has symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is the lowest among all the elements, and it does not have a melting point at standard pressures. It is the second-lightest and second-most abundant element in the observable universe, after hydrogen. It is present at about 24% of the total elemental mass, which is more than 12 times the mass of all the heavier elements combined. Its abundance is similar to this in both the Sun and Jupiter, because of the very high nuclear binding energy (per nucleon) of helium-4 with respect to the next three elements after helium. This helium-4 binding energy also accounts for why it is a product of both nuclear fusion and radioactive decay. The most common isotope of helium in the universe is helium-4, the vast majority of which was formed during the Big Bang. Large amounts of new helium are created by nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars.
Helium was first detected as an unknown, yellow spectral line signature in sunlight during a solar eclipse in 1868 by Georges Rayet, Captain C. T. Haig,Captain C. T. Haig (1868) "Account of spectroscopic observations of the eclipse of the sun, August 18th, 1868" Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 17 : 74–80. From p. 74: "I may state at once that I observed the spectra of two red flames close to each other, and in their spectra two broad bright bands quite sharply defined, one rose-madder and the other light golden." Norman R. Pogson,Pogson filed his observations of the 1868 eclipse with the local Indian government, but his report wasn't published. (Biman B. Nath, The Story of Helium and the Birth of Astrophysics (New York, New York: Springer, 2013), p. 8.) Nevertheless, Lockyer quoted from his report. From p. 320 of Lockyer, J. Norman (1896) "The story of helium. Prologue," Nature, 53 : 319–322 : "Pogson, in referring to the eclipse of 1868, said that the yellow line was "at D, or near D." " and Lieutenant John Herschel,Lieutenant John Herschel (1868) "Account of the solar eclipse of 1868, as seen at Jamkandi in the Bombay Presidency," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 17 : 104–120. From p. 113: As the moment of the total solar eclipse approached, " ... I recorded an increasing brilliancy in the spectrum in the neighborhood of D, so great in fact as to prevent any measurement of that line till an opportune cloud moderated the light. I am not prepared to offer any explanation of this." From p. 117: "I also consider that there can be no question that the ORANGE LINE was identical with D, so far as the capacity of the instrument to establish any such identity is concerned." and was subsequently confirmed by French astronomer Jules Janssen.In his initial report to the French Academy of Sciences about the 1868 eclipse, Janssen made no mention of a yellow line in the solar spectrum. See: Janssen (1868) "Indication de quelques-uns des résultats obtenus à Cocanada, pendant l'éclipse du mois d'août dernier, et à la suite de cette éclipse" (Information on some of the results obtained at Cocanada, during the eclipse of the month of last August, and following that eclipse), Comptes rendus ... , 67 : 838–839. Wheeler M. Sears, Helium: The Disappearing Element (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 2015), p. 44. Françoise Launay with Storm Dunlop, trans., The Astronomer Jules Janssen: A Globetrotter of Celestial Physics (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 2012), p. 45. However, subsequently, in an unpublished letter of 19 December 1868 to Charles Sainte-Claire Deville, Janssen asked Deville to inform the French Academy of Sciences that : "Several observers have claimed the bright D line as forming part of the spectrum of the prominences on 18 August. The bright yellow line did indeed lie very close to D, but the light was more refrangible [i.e., of shorter wavelength] than those of the D lines. My subsequent studies of the Sun have shown the accuracy of what I state here." (See: (Launay, 2012), p. 45.) Janssen is often jointly credited with detecting the element, along with Norman Lockyer. Janssen recorded the helium spectral line during the solar eclipse of 1868, while Lockyer observed it from Britain. However, only Lockyer proposed that the line was due to a new element, which he named after the Sun. The formal discovery of the element was made in 1895 by chemists Sir William Ramsay, Per Teodor Cleve, and Nils Abraham Langlet, who found helium emanating from the uranium ore cleveite, which is no longer regarded as a separate mineral species, but as a variety of uraninite. In 1903, large reserves of helium were found in natural gas fields in parts of the United States, by far the largest supplier of the gas.
Liquid helium is used in cryogenics (its largest single use, consuming about a quarter of production), and in the cooling of superconducting magnets, with its main commercial application in MRI scanners. Helium's other industrial uses—as a pressurizing and purge gas, as a protective atmosphere for arc welding, and in processes such as growing crystals to make silicon wafers—account for half of the gas produced. A small but well-known use is as a lifting gas in balloons and airships. For a more authoritative but older 1996 pie chart showing U.S. helium use by sector, showing much the same result, see the chart reproduced in "Applications" section of this article. As with any gas whose density differs from that of air, inhaling a small volume of helium temporarily changes the timbre and quality of the human voice. In scientific research, the behavior of the two fluid phases of helium-4 (helium I and helium II) is important to researchers studying quantum mechanics (in particular the property of superfluidity) and to those looking at the phenomena, such as superconductivity, produced in matter near absolute zero.
On Earth, it is relatively rare—5.2 ppm by volume in the atmosphere. Most terrestrial helium present today is created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy radioactive elements (thorium and uranium, although there are other examples), as the alpha particles emitted by such decays consist of helium-4 nuclei. This radiogenic helium is trapped with natural gas in concentrations as great as 7% by volume, from which it is extracted commercially by a low-temperature separation process called fractional distillation. Terrestrial helium is a non-renewable resource because once released into the atmosphere, it promptly escapes into space. Its supply is thought to be rapidly diminishing. However, some studies suggest that helium produced deep in the Earth by radioactive decay can collect in natural gas reserves in larger-than-expected quantities, in some cases having been released by volcanic activity.
History
Scientific discoveries The first evidence of helium was observed on August 18, 1868, as a bright yellow line with a wavelength of 587.49 nanometers in the spectrum of the chromosphere of the Sun. The line was detected by French astronomer Jules Janssen during a total solar eclipse in Guntur, India. This line was initially assumed to be sodium. On October 20 of the same year, English astronomer Norman Lockyer observed a yellow line in the solar spectrum, which he named the D3 because it was near the known D1 and D2 Fraunhofer lines of sodium. He concluded that it was caused by an element in the Sun unknown on Earth. Lockyer named the element helium, from the Greek word for the Sun, (helios). It is sometimes said that English chemist Edward Frankland was also involved in the naming, but this is unlikely as he doubted the existence of this new element. The ending "-ium" is unusual, as it normally applies only to metallic elements; probably Lockyer, being an astronomer, was unaware of the chemical conventions.
In 1881, Italian physicist Luigi Palmieri detected helium on Earth for the first time through its D3 spectral line, when he analyzed a material that had been sublimated during a recent eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
On March 26, 1895, Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay isolated helium on Earth by treating the mineral cleveite (a variety of uraninite with at least 10% rare-earth elements) with mineral acids. Ramsay was looking for argon but, after separating nitrogen and oxygen from the gas, liberated by sulfuric acid, he noticed a bright yellow line that matched the D3 line observed in the spectrum of the Sun. These samples were identified as helium by Lockyer and British physicist William Crookes.See:
It was independently isolated from cleveite in the same year by chemists Per Teodor Cleve and Abraham Langlet in Uppsala, Sweden, who collected enough of the gas to accurately determine its atomic weight.See:
English translation:
Before he was aware of the identity with Lockyer's helium, Ramsay originally intended to name the new gas krypton, a name he later reused for one of the heavier noble gases. Helium was also isolated by American geochemist William Francis Hillebrand prior to Ramsay's discovery, when he noticed unusual spectral lines while testing a sample of the mineral uraninite. Hillebrand, however, attributed the lines to nitrogen.Hillebrand (1890) "On the occurrence of nitrogen in uraninite and on the composition of uraninite in general," Bulletin of the U.S. Geological Survey, no. 78, pp. 43–79. His letter of congratulations to Ramsay offers an interesting case of discovery, and near-discovery, in science.
In 1907, Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds demonstrated that alpha particles are helium nuclei by allowing the particles to penetrate the thin glass wall of an evacuated tube, then creating a discharge in the tube, to study the spectrum of the new gas inside. In 1908, helium was first liquefied by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes by cooling the gas to less than .Onnes, H. Kamerlingh (1908) "The liquefaction of helium," Communications from the Physical Laboratory at the University of Leiden, 9 (108) : 1–23. He tried to solidify it by further reducing the temperature but failed, because helium does not solidify at atmospheric pressure. Onnes' student Willem Hendrik Keesom was eventually able to solidify 1 cm3 of helium in 1926 by applying additional external pressure.See: Preliminary notice: Keesom, W. H. (17 July 1926) Letters to the Editor: "Solidification of helium," Nature, 118 : 81. Preliminary notice: Keesom, W. H. (1926) "L'hélium solidifié," Comptes rendus ... , 183 : 26. Keesom, W. H. (1926) "Solid Helium," Communications from the Physical Laboratory at the University of Leiden, 17 (184) .