Where does helium come from?

The vast majority comes from Nuclear Fusion processes in stars.

Try this link:
Helium

My first response was going to be "Balloons!"

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Originally Posted by Capuchin

My first response was going to be "Balloons!"

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the air we breath do have helium... I'm thinking they get the helium out of the compressed air... just wonder

The questions is moot... moot I say, helium exists naturally in the air, somewhere around 20% of the air we breathe is helium.

You cannot simply comress air to "make" helium... if you really want to know how helium is produced for the commercial market, natural gas is subjected to high pressure and low temperatures until all the gasses other than helium turn to liquid (helium has the lowest boiling point of other gasses in natural gas) the resulting helium in gas form is drawn out while the other constituents remain in liquid form.

All of this is exaplained in a lot more detail in the wikipedia entry mentionned.

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Originally Posted by Lowtax4eva

the questions is moot... moot i say, helium exists naturally in the air, somewhere around 20% of the air we breathe is helium.

You cannot simply comress air to "make" helium... if you really want to know how helium is produced for the commercial market, natural gas is subjected to high pressure and low temperatures until all the gasses other than helium turn to liquid (helium has the lowest boiling point of other gasses in natural gas) the resulting helium in gas form is drawn out while the other constituents remain in liquid form.

All of this is exaplained in alot more detail in the wikipedia entry mentionned.

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20% of the air is helium or oxygen(18%)?. to get the helium out of the "" compressed"" they use the process called fractional distillation??