Why is Helium so difficult to synthesize?
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Helium is an element, not a compound. Elements are atoms, the “smallest” building block in chemistry. To create a new element you need to have massive machines to smash them together, with enough force to fuse them together, but not enough to break them apart. Imagine shooting 2 grains of sand at eachother and them fusing into a larger grain of sand. First thet must hit eachother, and then they must fuse into one.
Another problem is that helium is small, and built by 2 protons and 2 neutrons. To be able to make one you need these building blocks. Hydrogen is normally 1 proton. A small fraction is deuterium, and has 1 proton and 1 neutron. You have probably heard about heavy water, this is regular water (2 hydrogen with one oxygen atom) where 1 or both hydrogens have an extra neutron. So you would need first find 2 atoms of hydrogen that has 1 neutron, and then fire them against eachother and hit, then make them fuse in a stable atom, and then hope the impact did not break of one neutron and creating an unstable helium with only 1 neutron.
You can also have tritium, 1 proton and 2 neuteons, but this is unstable and breaks down, releasing gamma and neutrons.
Another way of getting helium is trough decay of unstable heavy elements, like uranium and thorium. This however is a radioactive prosess that also release other elements that can contaminate and are themselves radioactive. You may have heard of alfa, beta and gamma radiation? Alfa radiation is high energy helium atoms shooting off from the broken core.
Chemistry is “easy”, manipulation of atomic mass, not so much.
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