Can helium be made artificially?

Not in useful amounts. Stars make helium by fusing hydrogen at millions of degrees, and nuclear reactions can make tiny amounts, but nothing can make it cheaply on the scale we use it. Almost all the helium we use is dug up with natural gas.

What will happen if we run out of helium?

Many things would get harder or more expensive. Liquid helium cools the superconducting magnets in MRI scanners and many science instruments, and nothing replaces it for temperatures below about −256 °C (−429 °F). That is why labs and hospitals increasingly capture and recycle it, and why MRI makers are working on magnets that need less of it.

Where does the US get its helium from?

Mostly from its own natural gas fields, especially in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming. In 2024 the United States was the world's largest producer. It also imported helium, mostly from Qatar and Canada (USGS).

How many years of helium are left?

Nobody can give an exact number, because it depends on new discoveries, prices and how much we recycle. The USGS estimates the United States has about 8.5 billion cubic meters of recoverable helium in known gas reservoirs, and other countries hold about 31 billion cubic meters more. Helium is non-renewable on human timescales, so wasting it is a real concern.

No. Helium is a noble gas and never burns. That is why it replaced hydrogen, which is lighter but catches fire easily, in balloons and airships.

Is it safe to breathe helium from a balloon?

No. Breathing helium pushes oxygen out of your lungs, and without oxygen you can get dizzy or faint within moments. Breathing it from a pressurised tank can also damage the lungs. Never breathe helium from balloons or tanks.

Where Does Helium Come From? An Interactive Explainer

Q: Where does the helium in balloons come from?

It comes from natural gas wells. Deep underground, natural uranium and thorium in rocks slowly decay and give off alpha particles, which become helium atoms. Over millions of years some of that helium collects under domes of tight rock together with natural gas. When the gas is drilled, the helium is separated out by chilling the gas until everything else turns to liquid.

Where does helium come from? The short answer

Almost all the helium we use on Earth comes from deep underground. Rocks contain tiny amounts of natural radioactive elements, mainly uranium and thorium. Very slowly, their atoms break apart and throw out alpha particles. An alpha particle is two protons and two neutrons, which is exactly the nucleus of a helium atom. It picks up two electrons and becomes a new helium atom.³⁵¹¹

Over millions of years, some of that helium collects in the same underground rock traps as natural gas. When companies drill for the gas, they separate the helium out and sell it for everything from MRI scanners to party balloons.¹⁵

The helium in the rest of the universe has a different origin. Most of it was made in the first few minutes after the Big Bang, and stars like the Sun make more by fusing hydrogen.⁸⁷

What is helium?

Helium is element number 2 on the periodic table, with the symbol He. It is a colourless, odourless, tasteless gas and a noble gas, which means it almost never reacts with anything. It is the second lightest element after hydrogen, and it turns into a liquid at about −269 °C, a lower temperature than any other element.³⁴⁶

Helium was found in the Sun first

Helium is the only element discovered in space before anyone found it on Earth. During a solar eclipse in 1868, the French astronomer Pierre Janssen split sunlight into a rainbow, called a spectrum, and saw a bright yellow line. At first it was taken for sodium, which also makes yellow lines. The same year, the English astronomer Norman Lockyer showed that the line didn't match sodium's two lines, and named the new element after Helios, the Greek god of the Sun.³⁴

For more than 20 years nobody could find helium on Earth. Then in 1895, the chemist William Ramsay caught it in the gas released when a uranium mineral was dissolved in acid. That was the first clue to where Earth's helium comes from: it had been made inside the rock by radioactive decay.⁴ In 1903, a gas well in Kansas produced gas that "refused" to burn. It turned out to hold almost 2% helium, the first sign that natural gas could be a helium source.⁶

How is helium made in stars?

Helium makes up about about a quarter of the mass of ordinary matter in the universe, second only to hydrogen.³ Most of it formed in the first few minutes after the Big Bang, when the young universe was hot enough to squeeze protons and neutrons together.⁸ Since then, stars have added more. In the Sun's core, at about 15 million °C, hydrogen nuclei crash together. Through a chain of steps, four hydrogen nuclei end up as one helium nucleus. A tiny bit of mass turns into the energy that becomes sunlight.⁷⁹ Want the full story? See how stars are formed.

But we can't collect helium from the Sun, so the helium we use has to come from somewhere closer.

How is helium made on Earth? Radioactive decay in rock

Natural radioactivity is all around us, in soil, rock and water, and it always has been.¹⁴ Rocks such as granite hold tiny amounts of uranium and thorium. Their atoms are unstable, so every now and then one breaks apart and shoots out an alpha particle. Alpha particles can't travel far: a sheet of paper stops them, and they travel only a few centimetres through air.¹⁰¹¹ Inside a rock they stop almost at once, pick up two electrons, and become ordinary, harmless helium atoms.³

This happens incredibly slowly. It takes about 4.5 billion years for half of the uranium-238 in a rock to break down, roughly the age of the Earth.¹²¹³ The whole crust still makes about 3,000 tonnes of new helium a year, but it's spread through an enormous amount of rock.¹⁵ (The atom counts in the time-slider toy are illustrative, not real numbers.) To learn more about how splitting atoms releases energy, see how nuclear energy works.

Where helium comes from	How it's made	Can we collect it?
Big Bang	Protons and neutrons fused in the first minutes	No, it's spread across the universe
Stars (like the Sun)	Fusion: 4 hydrogen nuclei → 1 helium nucleus	No
Rocks in Earth's crust	Uranium and thorium decay → alpha particles → helium	Yes, where it's trapped with natural gas
The air	Helium leaking out of the ground	Rarely: only 1 part in 200,000

How helium gets trapped with natural gas

Helium atoms are tiny, so they slowly work their way upward through cracks and pores in the rock. Most of them reach the surface, mix into the air and eventually escape into space.¹⁵ But in a few places, a layer of tight, non-porous rock arches over a layer of porous rock like a lid. Gas rising from below gets stuck under the dome, and over millions of years a pocket of natural gas and helium builds up.¹⁵⁵

Most natural gas holds only a trace of helium. It is usually worth extracting when the gas is more than about 0.3% helium, and some gas fields in the United States hold as much as 7.6%.⁵¹⁶³

How is helium extracted?

Drill: a well brings natural gas up from the trap.
Chill: a processing plant cools the gas under high pressure until methane, nitrogen and the other gases turn to liquid. Helium stays a gas because it boils at a much lower temperature.
Purify: the crude helium is cleaned further (for example by passing it over cold charcoal) to about 99.995% pure.
Ship: it is sold as a compressed gas or as liquid helium.

³¹

Which countries produce the most helium?

Helium is produced in only a handful of countries. The figures below are the U.S. Geological Survey's estimates for 2024, in million cubic meters.¹²

Country	Production 2024 (million m³)
United States	81 (68 from natural gas + 13 from storage)
Qatar	64
Russia	17
Algeria	11
Canada	6
World total	about 180

Why do helium balloons float?

A litre of air weighs about 1.2 grams. A litre of helium weighs only about 0.16 grams, so helium is roughly seven times lighter than air.¹⁹⁴ The heavier air around a balloon pushes it upward, just like water pushes a beach ball up to the surface. Hydrogen is even lighter (about 0.08 grams per litre), but it catches fire easily. Helium never burns, which makes it the safe choice for balloons and blimps.¹⁸¹¹⁷ (In the balloon toy, the speeds are made up to show the idea; only the weights per litre are real.)

Safety: never breathe in helium from balloons or tanks. It pushes the oxygen out of your lungs, and without oxygen you can faint within moments.²⁰²¹

Why is helium rare on Earth if it's common in space?

Helium is so light that Earth's gravity can't hold on to it. Once it's released, from the ground or from a leaky balloon, it rises to the top of the atmosphere and slowly escapes into space. That's why only about 1 part in 200,000 of the air is helium.³⁵

Myths about helium

Myth: "Helium is made in factories." Earth's helium is made naturally by radioactive decay in rock and collected with natural gas. Nobody can make it cheaply.¹⁵
Myth: "Balloon helium comes from the air or the Sun." The air has almost none, and we can't reach the Sun's. It comes from gas wells.³
Myth: "It comes from radioactive decay, so it must be radioactive." Helium atoms are completely stable. The decay happened slowly, deep underground, long ago.³
Myth: "It's the second most common element, so it can't run out." It's common in space but rare on Earth, and helium we release escapes into space.⁵
Myth: "Breathing balloon helium is harmless fun." It can make you faint from lack of oxygen.²⁰

What is helium used for?

In the United States in 2024, helium was used for lab and science gases (22%), lifting gas such as balloons and airships (18%), MRI scanners (17%), making computer chips and fibre optics (15%), welding (8%), aerospace (7%), leak detection (5%) and deep-sea diving (5%).¹

MRI scanners use very strong superconducting magnets, and those only work when they are kept extremely cold. Liquid helium, at about −269 °C, does that job.⁶¹⁷ For temperatures below about −256 °C (−429 °F), nothing can replace helium.¹

Is helium running out?

Helium isn't about to vanish, but it is non-renewable on human timescales: new helium forms far too slowly to replace what we use, and what escapes into space never comes back.⁶⁵ Supplies depend on a few gas fields, so there have been several shortages and big price jumps, which hit hospitals and science labs hard.⁵¹⁷ The good news: liquid helium that boils away can be captured and turned back into liquid. More labs and hospitals now recycle it, and MRI makers are building magnets that need less.¹⁵

Where does helium come from?

Follow the helium yourself

Play with helium!

Spot the new line

Helium's D3 line vs sodium

Fuse hydrogen

The proton-proton chain, simplified

Age a rock

Radiogenic helium over time

Wait and watch

Take the lid off

Cap rock and reservoir

Put the lid on

Fill the balloon

Buoyancy and density

Up or down?

Where does it go?

US helium use, 2024