Argon History

Argon (Greek argos meaning "inactive") was suspected to be present in air by Henry Cavendish in 1785 but was not discovered until 1894 by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay.

This gas is isolated through liquid air fractionation since the atmosphere contains only 0.934% volume of argon (1.29% mass). The Martian atmosphere in contrast contains 1.6% of Ar-40 and 5 ppm Ar-36. In 2005, the Huygens probe also discovered the presence of Ar-40 on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

Before 1962, argon and the other noble gases were generally considered to be chemically inert and not able to form compounds. However, since then, scientists have been able to force the heavier noble gases to form compounds. In 2000, the first argon compounds were formed by researchers at the University of Helsinki. By shining ultraviolet light onto frozen argon containing a small amount of hydrogen fluoride, they were able to form argon hydrofluoride