r/todayilearned • u/jamieseemsamused • 5h ago

TIL Helium was first detected in the Sun from an unknown spectral line during a solar eclipse, years before any Helium was discovered on Earth. It was named after Helios, Greek god of the Sun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium
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362

u/No-Shallot5028 3h ago

Imagine discovering a brand new element inside the literal Sun, naming it after a Greek God, and fast forward a century later we just use it to make our voices sound like chipmunks at children's birthday parties.

149

u/NightIgnite 3h ago

Balloons are negligible. Main use is in engineering, like magnetic resonance imaging and semiconductor lithography

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u/TempleMade_MeBroke 3h ago

In case you're not joking, a vast majority of helium use is actually in the industrial, scientific, and medical fields! It cools the magnets stuff like MRI machines, it's used in welding, deep-sea diving, pressurizing rocket fuel tanks, in fiber optic production, treating respiratory conditions...it's used all over the place!

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u/ExpiredSkydiver 2h ago

It makes me wonder why we even waste it in balloons. Not a lot of helium in the world

30

u/nomenMei 2h ago

I think some portion of helium used for balloons is essentially waste helium not useful for industrial applications.

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u/SchrodingersNinja 1h ago

What would make it not useful? Unless I'm misinformed, and I may be, I don't think helium can form molecules or anything.

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u/nomenMei 1h ago

I believe you're right that helium is pretty chemically inert.

I actually looked it up and I was misremembering what I read. It's not quite waste helium, it's helium that is a byproduct of natural gas extraction and that extracts more low grade helium than is needed at any one time to be refined into high grade helium for industrial applications. So we have a surplus of low grade helium that no one needs and we don't have the infrastructure to store. So it is sold at low cost for balloons and such, and eventually escapes the atmosphere.

I also think one of the reasons we need so little high grade helium is that because it is chemically inert and we only need it for its physical properties we are really good at reusing it (but not perfect at it).

It's like if when mining for precious metals instead of just putting the excess silt and clay somewhere else where we could use it later, it all escapes into atmosphere never to be useful again.

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u/ExpiredSkydiver 1h ago

Interesting

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u/FreeHKTaiwanNumber1 1h ago

Maybe impurities from the source that would affect more sensitive instruments/applications

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u/SchrodingersNinja 56m ago

I don't think it can have impurities. It's an inert gas, like Neon.

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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 39m ago

Gases can’t have impurities the way a crystal can, which is literal atoms in places they shouldn’t be. Having a bromine atom instead of chlorine in table salt would be such an impurity. But a volume of gas can have impurities the same way can be dirty. The water is still water but there’s other stuff in there that’s annoying to get out. Normal air is an impurity if your goal is pure helium.

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u/Ill-Engineering8085 1h ago

No such thing as waste helium. The atom doesn't get stale

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u/Whereami259 1h ago

Yes-ish, except for radioactive atoms... Its more about traces of other gases mixed in which are hard to separate. There are also different isotopes.

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u/Ill-Engineering8085 41m ago

Helium 3 and Helium 4 are the only natural isotopes and completely stable. The radioactive isotopes decay in milliseconds. They already have to separate helium. It's not found in high concentrations. None of this is a problem

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u/Seraph062 34m ago

No, but AFAIK Helium is a byproduct of natural gas production, so if you don't have a need for it (that is, something worth the trouble of separating it out from the natural gas) it gets sent along for the ride and dumped out in the exhaust when the gas is burned.

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u/nomenMei 33m ago edited 30m ago

I was under the impression that under a certain ppm the gas wasn't useful for industrial uses and refining it to higher concentrations was not scaleable (kind of like desalination) but that was just me misremembering what I read a while ago.

Like if while in the process of using and reusing high grade helium the amount of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide in its composition go up until it's no longer useable and is then sold off for use in balloons. But that was wrong.

2

u/Pizzawing1 1h ago

It’s ironic, because Helium is the second most abundant element in the Universe. Unfortunately, it is also the most chemically stable element, and the second lightest element… so it’s incredibly hard for us to source it on Earth. The Moon, however 👀

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u/DeputySean 2h ago

Plenty of it in the universe, though!

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u/OneSkepticalOwl 1h ago

Better yet, imagine the Greek god doing the same. [chipmunk voice]YOU WILL FEAR ME!!!!! [/chipmunk voice]

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u/Away_Historian_2803 48m ago

Everybody needs to get a blimp 'Cause blimps are pretty pimp You can fill it up with air But that won't get you anywhere

Advertise upon the side Take your girlfriend for a ride Just fill up the balloon With the very best gas in toon

Helium! Don't breathe it in though

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u/eepos96 12m ago

I'd say thst is perfect, most of the universes Helium is inside the sun. I wish we had same logic with hydrogen. Amd they would form a naming pair. Apollium, helium.

Edit: after googling, hydrogen comes from the hydro and means water. And it is precisly the place where most of our hydrogen is.