Primordial helium from the beginning of the solar system may be stuck inside Earth's solid core, new research suggests. The findings could have implications for a long-standing debate about how ...

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

That is, helium which differs from normal helium, or 4 He, so called because it contains two protons and two neutrons and is continuously produced by radioactive decay. Primordial helium ...

On Earth, helium comes in two stable isotopes. By far the most common is helium-4, with a nucleus containing two protons and two neutrons. Helium-4 accounts for around 99.99986 percent of all the ...

That is, helium, which differs from normal helium, or 4 He, so called because it contains two protons and two neutrons and is continuously produced by radioactive decay.

Single protons—hydrogen nuclei—are fused in a series of steps to produce helium-4 plus a lot of energy. The Sun’s proton-proton chain runs at something like 100 million Earth ...

When two deuterium nuclei are fused together, they form a helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons) that weighs less than two deuterium nuclei. As in uranium fission the weight loss turns into ...

For example, a helium atom has an atomic mass of 4, but an atomic number (or positive charge) of 2. Since electrons have almost no mass, it seemed that something besides the protons in the nucleus ...

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 ...