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Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, after hydrogen, it is estimated that it forms up to 24% of the detectable mass. To give us an idea, it represents 13% of the composition of Jupiter and 23.8% of the mass of the sun.
Astrophysicists discovered a long time ago that in the universe, thanks to the nuclear fusion processes that take place inside stars, helium is being produced continuously.
Helium is also the second lightest element, being made up of two protons and two electrons, and belongs to the group known as ‘noble gases’. All of them share a series of singularities, on the one hand, they are colorless and odorless and, on the other, they have very low chemical radioactivity.
A new element of the periodic table
Despite its abundance in the universe, it was not discovered until well into the second half of the 19th century. It was on August 18, 1868, during an eclipse, when the Frenchman Pierre Jules Janssen (1824-1907), performing spectrometry, detected a bright yellow line in the spectrum of the solar chromosphere. At the time he thought it was sodium.
Barely two months later, another scientist, the English Norman Locyer (1836-1920), concluded that he was wrong, that it really was a new element, a gas not previously detected on our planet. He decided to name it ‘helium’, since in ancient Greek this word means ‘sun’.
However, we had to wait until 1882 for a third scientist, the Italian Luigi Palmieri (1807-1896), observed the characteristic yellow line on our planet, discovered it by analyzing the lava of Vesuvius.
Very rare on our planet
The helium that we find on earth comes from the radioactive decay of some elements, with natural gas deposits being the main source of obtaining it. Helium is a non-renewable resource and, at the moment, the main world reserve is in Texas (United States).
For some time now, scientists have been warning us that the demand for helium is higher than the supply and that world supplies are running low, which should put us on alert. And it is that, despite its scarcity, helium is a fundamental chemical element for science, it is used to cool the superconducting magnets of magnetic resonances; is the cooling medium Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and thanks to it we can calculate the age of minerals containing thorium and uranium.
Fortunately, it’s not all bad news. In 2016, the scientific community was pleased to discover a helium deposit to the east of the Rift Valley, in Tanzania, which could solve the shortage we have.
Inhaling helium changes our voice
When we emit words, the air travels from the lungs to the larynx, where the vocal cords are located, hitting their lower part. This causes a vibration that has a decisive influence on the tone of the voice.
Low-frequency sounds correspond to a low pitch, while higher frequencies are perceived as a higher pitch. The frequency of sound depends on the density of the element that makes them vibrate, so that the less dense the medium, the higher the frequency and, therefore, the higher the pitch of the sound.
Comparatively, the density of helium is much lower than that of air, which explains why the vocal cords vibrate at a higher speed and, therefore, produce a higher pitch.
Pedro Gargantilla is an internist at El Escorial Hospital (Madrid) and the author of several popular books.
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