Where does helium come from?
Helium is a volatile noble gas, that does not form any chemical compounds. Helium atoms eventually reach escape velocity at moderate temperatures, so that helium gas in the Earth's atmosphere disappears over many millions of years. Before finding any deposits on Earth, the element helium was discovered by observing the light spectrum of our sun and therefore got its name. But where does the helium gas, that is used today for toy balloons, come from?
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Although comets may be the source of the water on our planet, they have little to do with helium on Earth. Unlike our Sun, there is no nuclear fusion in the Earth's interior. The solar wind helps to enrich helium in the earth's atmosphere, but this proportion is too small to extract it profitably from the air. The rare isotope helium-3 occurs only to a very small extent naturally, so that it is only artificially generated by nuclear fission in significant quantities and is an byproduct of tritium production for hydrogen bombs. Helium-3 is used in dilution refrigerators and thus serves the basic research of material at low temperatures. But toy balloons are filled with the less-expensive helium-4, for which there are also natural occurrences on Earth. Natural gas contains up to 7% helium and is the main source of helium production. This gas is produced by nuclear decay in the Earth's interior through the released alpha radiation. The helium atoms diffuse relatively easily through minerals and accumulate in natural gas bubbles.