{"id":26428,"date":"2026-07-11T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T05:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=26428"},"modified":"2026-07-11T13:59:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T08:29:01","slug":"helium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/helium\/","title":{"rendered":"Helium"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Helium Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, the Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs, China, has temporarily but immediately banned helium exports from the country.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Helium<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is an <\/span><b>inert gas<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and does not react with other substances or combust.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was <\/span><b>discovered in 1868<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by <\/span><b>Jules Janssen and Norman Lockyer<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> via a yellow spectral line during a solar eclipse.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Formation:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It is a <\/span><b>non-renewable resource<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> generated deep in the earth\u2019s crust, where the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium atoms emits alpha particles, which<\/span><b> capture electrons to form helium atoms.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Properties of Helium<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Its <\/span><b>atomic number is 2,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> making it the second lightest element after hydrogen.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Helium also has a <\/span><b>very low boiling point<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (-268.9\u00b0 C), allowing it to remain a gas even in super-cold environments.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It does not participate easily in <\/span><b>chemical reactions.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Helium is the <\/span><b>second-lightest element<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, after hydrogen, and is not manufactured.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>gas is non-toxic,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> but cannot be breathed on its own, because it displaces the oxygen humans need for respiration.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is the only element that cannot be solidified by sufficient cooling at normal atmospheric pressure.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Largest global reserves:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> United States, Algeria, and Russia.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India\u2019s <\/span><b>Rajmahal Volcanic Basin<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (Jharkhand) is a significant helium reservoir trapped for billions of years.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>Applications of Helium<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Used as Coolant:<\/strong> It is used as <strong>coolant to cool the magnets in MRI machines<\/strong>, the silicon wafers in the semiconductor fabricating industry, and, increasingly, some of the devices used in quantum computers.<\/li>\n<li><b>Leak Detector:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Engineers use helium as a leak-detector.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/fibre-optic-cables\/\" target=\"_blank\">Optical Fibre<\/a> Manufacture: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is also used in the <\/span><b>process of drawing optical fibres<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to rapidly and uniformly cool molten glass and to displace oxygen or nitrogen from forming bubbles inside the material.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Aerospace:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Spaceflight organisations like ISRO, NASA, and SpaceX <\/span><b>use helium to pressurise fuel tanks<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in rockets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Research and the tourism<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> sector in many parts of the world also use helium to inflate balloons and airships.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source:<\/b> <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/international\/chinastemporary-export-ban-on-helium-explained\/article71206477.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TH<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Helium is an inert gas and does not react with other substances or combust. Read more about Helium, Properties, Applications, Global Reserves, Latest News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":94773,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6356,21,22,23],"class_list":["post-26428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","tag-helium","tag-prelims-pointers","tag-upsc-current-affairs","tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26428"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112626,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26428\/revisions\/112626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}