Barium hydroxide, it absorbs very little CO in aqueous solutions and is therefore insensitive to atmospheric fluctuations. This property is used in calibrating pH equipment. Volatile barium compounds burn with a green to pale green flame, which is an efficient test to detect a barium compound. The color results from spectral lines at 455.4, 493.4, 553.6, and 611.1 nm. Organobarium compounds are a growing field of knowledge: recently discovered are dialkylbariums and alkylhalobariums. Barium found in the Earth's crust is a mixture of seven primordial nuclides, barium-130, 132, and 134 through 138. Barium-130 undergoes very slow radioactive decay to xenon-130 by
Barium a metal or when alloyed with aluminium, is used to remove unwanted gases (gettering) from vacuum tubes, such as TV picture tubes. Barium is suitable for this purpose because of its low vapor pressure and reactivity towards oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water; it can even partly remove noble gases by dissolving them in the crystal lattice. This application is gradually disappearing due to the rising popularity of the tubeless LCD and plasma sets. Other uses of elemental barium are minor and include an additive to silumin (aluminium–silicon alloys) that refines their structure, as well as Barium sulfate (the mineral