Did you know that helium, the gas that makes balloons float and gives us that funny voice when we inhale it, is actually a nonrenewable resource? It’s true! Helium is produced through the natural decay of radioactive uranium and thorium, but this process takes billions of years. Currently, we collect helium from underground natural gas pockets as a by-product of the extraction process.
But here’s the catch: helium is so light that any escaped gas eventually floats to the edge of our atmosphere and gets blown away from Earth by solar winds. That’s why helium is often described as the only true nonrenewable resource. It’s a goodbye to helium!
“It takes many, many millennia to make the helium that’s here on Earth,” says Sophia Hayes, a chemist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s the one element out of the entire periodic table that escapes the Earth and goes out into outer space.”
So why is helium so important? Well, it has the lowest boiling point of any element, making it incredibly cold. This property makes it perfect for cooling superconducting magnets in MRI machines and even powering space rockets. In fact, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland needs a whopping 120 metric tons of helium per week to keep it running!
But it’s not just scientific and medical industries that rely on helium. NASA, SpaceX, the pharmaceutical industry, and even the Department of Defense all need helium for various purposes. It’s a crucial resource that we can’t afford to lose.
Currently, the Federal Helium Reserve in the USA supplies around 40 percent of the world’s helium. However, the future of this reserve is uncertain. It was supposed to be sold to private industry, but there have been numerous delays. Now, it seems like the sale could finally happen in the next few months, but we don’t know how that will impact the helium supply chain.
Other countries like Qatar, Tanzania, Algeria, and Russia also have significant sources of helium, but their production capabilities are not as reliable. Estimates vary on how much helium is left in the world and how long it will last. Some experts say we have around 10 years left unless we put more effort into recycling, while others suggest we have between 100 and 200 years of helium usage. Regardless, the consequences for industries relying on helium could be enormous, not to mention the constantly fluctuating helium prices.
So next time you see a helium balloon floating in the sky, remember that it’s a precious resource that we need to use wisely.
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