Performing chemical bonding analysis of the Na2He compound, chemists note previously undetected features and predict that, by adding oxygen, a similar compound can be created. Can helium bond with ...

Helium, the gas that fills up our balloons, has a reputation as a chemistry lightweight—as an element that doesn’t react with much of anything. Researchers say they’ve used high pressure to coax ...

NORTHRIDGE, Calif. and BUFFALO, N.Y. — Helium, the second lightest element in the universe, has a variety of uses, from keeping balloons afloat to cooling superconducting magnets. It is also a noble ...

Noble gases—helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon—have long been believed to be the least reactive elements on the periodic table. Helium’s composition in particular, with its full outer ...

We often wonder what life and environmental conditions would be like on other planets. Scientists have speculated scenarios both similar to what we have on Earth and also completely different from ...

Helium, the most noble of the noble gases, long thought to be completely inert and thus too standoffish to bond with other atoms, recently surprised chemists by forming chemical compounds after all.

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. Further ...

The inner mantles of icy giant planets such as Uranus and Neptune are mainly composed by water, ammonia and methane, while their atmospheres are made of hydrogen and helium. Under high pressures ...

Elements in group 18 (formerly group 0) of the periodic table are “inert” no more. Until recently, helium, the “noblest” of the noble gases, was the last one not to have been made into a compound with ...

Helium is a famously inert element, but researchers have made a stable compound from helium and sodium. Artem Oganov at Stony Brook University in New York and his colleagues used an algorithm to look ...

Helium, a noble gas, was long believed to be 'too aloof' to react with the other elements on the periodic table. Now, however, scientists have provided a theoretical explanation of how helium may be ...