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, ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

Scientists have understood for some time that the most abundant elements in the Universe are simple gases like hydrogen and helium. These make up the vast majority of its observable mass, dwarfing all ...