The periodic table is 150 years old, so we've looked at some of its most intriguing elements. ... Is it a plane? No, it’s krypton - although unfortunately it has nothing to do with Superman.

It's not just Superman's home planet; Krypton is one of the rarest gases on Earth, composing only 1 part per million of the atmosphere by volume. Because krypton is so rare (and thus expensive ...

1898: Two British researchers discover the element krypton. It’s real, but it would inspire fantastic fiction. William Ramsay, a Scot, and his student Morris Travers, an Englishman, were ...

Since Mendeleev's time, scientists have discovered new elements, expanding the periodic table. The most recent additions include nihonium, moscovium, tennessine, and oganesson, which were officially ...

Krypton is a noble gas, and doesn’t combine with oxygen. For a long time, people thought it couldn’t combine with anything at all. It was only in 1960 that scientists finally managed to ...

Related: New periodic table shows the cosmic origins of your body’s elements Each element on the interactive table comes with a description and a list of a few different uses.

The elements in group 18 of the periodic table (the “noble gases”) were once considered to be chemically inert. But over the years, chemists discovered how to make molecules that contain them. In the ...