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Helium (from Greek: ἥλιος, romanized: helios, lit. 'sun') 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.
The Sun is a main-sequence star, and, as such, generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen and makes 616 million metric tons of helium each second. The fusion of lighter elements in stars releases energy and the mass that always accompanies it.
Helium fusion first begins when a star leaves the red giant branch after accumulating sufficient helium in its core to ignite it. In stars around the mass of the Sun, this begins at the tip of the red giant branch with a helium flash from a degenerate helium core, and the star moves to the horizontal branch where it
Helium 3 is rare on Earth, primarily produced by the radioactive decay of tritium, but it does reside in abundance in the lunar regolith, deposited by billions of years of solar wind.
Helium is inert - it does not react with other substances or combust - and its atomic number is 2, making it the second lightest element after hydrogen. Rockets need to achieve specific speeds and ...
The Sun is a typical star that maintains a balanced equilibrium by the fusion of hydrogen into helium at its core, releasing this energy from its outer photosphere. Astronomers classify it as a G-type main-sequence star. The largest objects that orbit the Sun are the eight planets.
That’s where helium comes in: With a boiling point of minus 452 degrees Fahrenheit, liquid helium is the coldest element on Earth. Pumped inside an MRI magnet, helium lets the current travel ...
As a side effect of the process, some carbon nuclei fuse with additional helium to produce a stable isotope of oxygen and energy: 12 6 C + 4 2 He → 16 8 O + γ (+7.162 MeV) Nuclear fusion reactions of helium with hydrogen produces lithium-5, which also is highly unstable, and decays back into smaller nuclei with a half-life of 3.7 × 10 −22 s.