Earth’s core could contain helium from the early solar system. The noble gas tucks into gaps in iron crystals under high pressure and temperature.

you’d be right if you thought it’s mostly rocks and minerals. Would you be surprised to know there are often traces of what is known as primordial helium as well? That is, helium which differs ...

F. A.) in collaboration with A. D. Misener. Observations were being made on the flow of liquid helium II through a tube packed with fine emery powder (Fig. 2). The top of the tube was allowed to ...

The discovery that helium and iron can mix at the temperatures and pressures found at the center of Earth could settle a long-standing debate over how our planet formed. Primordial helium from the ...

These results suggest that similar reactions between helium and iron may have occurred within Earth’s core shortly after its formation, trapping much of the primordial helium-3 in the material that ...

“We could probably count the number of people we’d need on one hand,” he says. Containers of helium would be shipped out by truck—one a day at most. Since helium is a nonhazardous ...