Which is your favourite chemical element? To mark the International Year of the Periodic Table, our science journalists will be arguing for their pick from the 118 known elements. In this instalment, ...

A global helium shortage has doctors worried about one of the natural gas’s most essential, and perhaps unexpected, uses: MRIs. Strange as it sounds, the lighter-than-air element that gives balloons ...

Discovered in the 1800s in the solar spectrum, helium has been an element that has eluded humans for centuries. Despite being listed as one of the most abundant elements in the universe, this noble ...