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Helium-4 makes up about one quarter of the ordinary matter in the universe by mass, with almost all of the rest being hydrogen. While nuclear fusion in stars also produces helium-4, most of the helium-4 in the Sun and in the universe is thought to have been produced during the Big Bang, known as "primordial helium". However, primordial helium-4 ...
In Earth's atmosphere, the ratio of 3 He to 4 He is 1.343(13) × 10 −6. [5] However, the isotopic abundance of helium varies greatly depending on its origin. In the Local Interstellar Cloud, the proportion of 3 He to 4 He is 1.62(29) × 10 −4, [6] which is ~121 times higher than in Earth's atmosphere.
Liquid helium is a physical state of helium at very low temperatures at standard atmospheric pressures.Liquid helium may show superfluidity.. At standard pressure, the chemical element helium exists in a liquid form only at the extremely low temperature of −269 °C (−452.20 °F; 4.15 K).
This condensation occurs in liquid helium-4 at a far higher temperature (2.17 K) than it does in helium-3 (2.5 mK) because each atom of helium-4 is a boson particle, by virtue of its zero spin. Helium-3, however, is a fermion particle, which can form bosons only by pairing with itself at much lower temperatures, in a weaker process that is ...
Almost all neutrons that fused instead of decaying ended up combined into helium-4, due to the fact that helium-4 has the highest binding energy per nucleon among light elements. This predicts that about 8% of all atoms should be helium-4, leading to a mass fraction of helium-4 of about 25%, which is in line with observations.
This unit is commonly used in physics and chemistry to express the mass of atomic-scale objects, such as atoms, molecules, and elementary particles, both for discrete instances and multiple types of ensemble averages. For example, an atom of helium-4 has a mass of 4.0026 Da. This is an intrinsic property of the isotope and all helium-4 atoms ...
Helium is the least water-soluble monatomic gas, [96] and one of the least water-soluble of any gas (CF 4, SF 6, and C 4 F 8 have lower mole fraction solubilities: 0.3802, 0.4394, and 0.2372 x 2 /10 −5, respectively, versus helium's 0.70797 x 2 /10 −5), [97] and helium's index of refraction is closer to unity than that of any other gas. [98]
the total rest mass on the two helium-nuclei = 2 × 4.0026 = 8.0052 u; missing rest mass = 8.029 – 8.0052 = 0.0238 atomic mass units. In a nuclear reaction, the total (relativistic) energy is conserved. The "missing" rest mass must therefore reappear as kinetic energy released in the reaction; its source is the nuclear binding energy. Using ...