Sources of helium?

Hi all!

Maybe this is not completely on-topic, but as there are helium filled balloons, I wonder.. Where on Earth do you find helium? Is it in the air, or under the Earth? It's an inert gas, so you can't just chemically 'produce' it from something (unless by nuclear fusion of hydrogen, but we all know about the problems of nuclear fusion....)

cheers, tobias

Helium is obtained by extraction from natural gas. This link:
http://www.airproducts.com/gases/helium.html

has a bit more information about it. As you can see, there are a number of other uses for helium besides LTA. There is some controversy these days about selling off helium reserves and the potential impact to such things as supercoolants, welding industry and of course LTA.