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Speaker 1: It gets smarter in sixty seconds with brain Stuff from

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Hi, I'm marshall brain. Have

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Speaker 1: you ever wondered where helium comes from? It's actually an

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Speaker 1: interesting question. If you put helium into a balloon and

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Speaker 1: let go of the balloon, the balloon rises until it pops.

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Speaker 1: When it pops, the helium that escapes has no reason

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Speaker 1: to stop. It just keeps going and leaks out into space. Therefore,

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Speaker 1: there is very little helium in the atmosphere at any

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Speaker 1: given time. The helium that we put into balloons has

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Speaker 1: to be created, and most of it gets created by uranium.

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Speaker 1: Most helium on Earth comes from radioactive decay like this.

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Speaker 1: A radioactive alpha particle is really just a helium nucleus.

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Speaker 1: It picks up a couple of electrons and it becomes

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Speaker 1: a helium atom. In places that have a lot of

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Speaker 1: uranium ore, natural gas tends to contain high concentrations of helium,

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Speaker 1: up to seven percent. This makes sense because the decay

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Speaker 1: of uranium emits lots of alpha particles, and a natural

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Speaker 1: gas pocket tends to be just a big sealed container

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Speaker 1: underground to hold the helium. Helium is cryogenically distilled out

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Speaker 1: of the natural gas to produce the helium that we

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Speaker 1: put into balloons. Do you have any ideas or suggestions

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Speaker 1: for this podcast? If so, please send me an email

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Speaker 1: at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more

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Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, go to how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com