Why is Helium so difficult to synthesize?
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Well, there‘s nothing to take it from.
If you wand hyrogenyou can electrolize water, since water contains hydrogen. If you iron you can refine iron ore. But what will you take helium from?
It is a noble gas, meaning it does not react with things, so there is no molecule that contains helium. (They only exist in extreme conditions). So now you inly have three options:
– find a gas mixture that contains helium and filter it out. Natural gas can contain between 0.01 and 7% helium for example
– radioactive decay. You may have heard alpha radiation before. In essence, that just means a radioactive element is shooting out helium cores. Pretty much all helium on earth comes from radioactive decay producing helium as a side product. Mostly it comes from uranium and thorium.
– fusion. This is by far the hardest. If you can‘t find an element, make it. Theres only two practical ways of making elements. We‘ve already talked about splitting other elements, and the alternative to that is mergkng. If you fuse two hydrogen you get helium, but this is a really expensive and experimental method. (It does work tho, and we have done it already)
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