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.

Iron can form compounds with helium at pressures as low as 5GPa – about 50,000 atmospheres – researchers in Japan report.

The discovery that inert helium can form bonds with iron may reshape our understanding of Earth’s history. Researchers from ...

The diamond anvil crushed iron and helium together under conditions mimicking those inside the Earth, to create a new compound. These compounds remained stable when pressures were reduced.

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 ...

Earth appears to be a chill blue planet, but deep down, it’s really a metalhead. Its outer core is mostly molten iron (and ...

The results were striking. Instead of helium remaining separate, as expected, it became incorporated into iron’s atomic lattice, forming compounds designated as FeHex (where x represents the ...

But in this case, they were surprised to find the crushed iron compounds contained as much as 3.3% helium, about 5,000 times higher than previously seen. Hirose suspects this is at least in part ...