Helium is fun for parties and making videos for the internet, but for scientists, helium
has way more use than just getting a rise out of people.
Hey breathing animals, Trace here for DNews.
Get ready to freak out.
There's a HELIUM SHORTAGE!!!
FREAK OUT.
Okay, we got that out of our collective systems?
Great.
See, before helium fills your party balloons it has to be harvested.
And though it can be pulled from the air, the far easier way is to extract it from the
Earth's crust just like oil!
Natural gas is commonly 7-percent helium.
So as it gets more difficult to find and extract, it will get more expensive, which is terrible
not just for the giant inflatable alphabet industry -- which came out of nowhere by the
way -- but also for science!
Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, but it's actually not that
common on Earth.
And, though we mostly associate it with balloons and silly voices, helium is way cooler than
that.
Helium is a noble gas -- which means it's inert, and unlike my ex, it's VERY stable
and non-toxic.
It's great for filling things like dirigibles, and deep-sea divers use helium mixed with
oxygen because it's more stable at depth…
It's so stable that rocket builders pressurize fuel tanks with it, it's reliable for radiation
detection systems, and arc welders (who play in temperatures above 3000 Celsius) use it
at as gaseous safety blanket.
Cryogenics companies, nuclear plants, satellite manufacturers, and wind tunnel engineers use
it too, because it can handle reaallly cold temperatures.
Helium is.
the.
coolest.
Below its boiling point of negative 269C, Helium becomes a superfluid -- a liquid that
flows without friction, and as we close in on absolute zero helium behaves as a supersolid
and has even more crazy traits!
It's unique thermal properties make helium popular with all the crowds: Physicists use
it with their superconducting magnets on the Large Hadron Collider, engineers put it in
MRI scanners in hospitals, and helium-neon lasers power supermarket barcode scanners.
This stuff is everywhere!
And yet.
It's not really.
On Earth, Helium -- officially called, Helium-4, comes from radioactive decay.
When a radioactive element like uranium or thorium breaks down over time (or decays),
it will occasionally lose two protons and two neutrons.
They'll just, break off; this is called Alpha Decay.
If that alpha particle grabs a couple of electrons, BOOM helium-4!
It happens all the time.
And yet, we're not surrounded by helium, because it's lighter than our atmosphere -- so it
floats all the way to the top, where it's stripped off into space by the sun.
And if you think Helium-4 is super rare, meet it's cousin isotope: Helium-3.
Helium-3 can be used as revolutionary future fuel for fusion power plants, but it's less
than a fraction of a percent of all helium on Earth…
so we'd have to mine it on the moon.
Actually, helium is way more common in space overall…
So if we're in a shortage… who should get the helium, scientists who need it for experiments
or Over the Hill balloons at the drug store?
Maybe we should feel bad about wasting helium-4…
Especially since the price we pay isn't really…
right.
See, from 1925 till the 1990s, the government was stockpiling helium from natural gas fields
in Texas, but then decided to flood the market and sell it all in 1996.
So now, the helium supply is inflated -- pun intended.
Though, luckily, scientists just found a huge reservoir in Tanzania, so our supply should
last for decades, but even still, it's not exactly renewable…
so eventually we will be out again.
Cue sad balloon floating away into a blue sky.
Interestingly, SourceFed covered the "world running out of helium" story like 4 years
ago.
Have you heard of SourceFed?
They do pop-culture news, comedy, it's like us, but faster paced and funnier!
Click the link below to get your daily dose of the trending news you need to know!
Do you feel bad for using all our helium you jerk?