Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 37

Discovering them was not so easy because they don't form chemical compounds. So they exist only as gases. And Helium disperses off into space.

Argon was the first to be found by density considerations because it is so abundant on Earth's atmosphere (~1%): Argon is abundant on Earth's atmosphere because it comes from the decay of Potassium-40.

Then basically all of the others were discovered by spectral lines. Helium notably was first found on the Sun like that, and only later on Earth! Thus its name. Pretty cool.

This used to have the best name ever allowing you to say:to English speakers and watch their faces drop.

But in 2023 the bastards renamed it to "Rocq", presumably pronounced "rock". Why, God, why.

And notably, it is almost all Argon-40, which is stable, but not the most common one to come from natural nucleosynthesis.

It's the thing that allows you to connect fiber optics into a compter, or the corresponding port for the thing.

Many of them can take two fibers as input/output because fiber optics cables often come in pairs because it is needed for duplex.

www.quandela.com/prometheus/ (2024 archive)