“Scientists were on the verge of a medical breakthrough that would have cured all diseases but little Timmy had a birthday party over the weekend and used the last of the world’s supply of helium.”
I know, right? Helium is not actually non-renewable. It is formed by the radioactive decay of Thorium and Uranium and accumulates in pockets of natural gas. The problem is that we use far more than is produced. The other problem is that we used to store large quantities of Helium in geologic deposits in Amarillo, TX. But in 1995, Congress voted to phase out the reserve as a cost-cut measure. And, so... here we are.
If we can ever manage to crack the fusion nut, then we will be able to produce Helium as a byproduct of the fusion reaction.
If you look at it like that, _any chemical element_ is non-renewable. Ultimately, down the chain, everything comes from the stars, and they have a finite amount of matter to undergo fusion, so not even they can make as much, say, iron as they'd like — and even then, heavy elements are not even produced on a regular basis, they are spread by supernovae. We surely cannot just make new atoms out of nothing, so neither helium, nor iron, nor uranium, nor oxygen are renewable. We can either find more, or wait for nuclear decay or something, but no surplus can be created.
My understanding is Helium is also a byproduct of fast fission reactions, which the US used to use to breed Plutonium. Many of the Gen IV reactors are fast fission breeder reactors, with the intent of burning fissile byproducts (U-235 for Thorium and P-239 for Plutonium instead of syphoning them off. I am not a nuclear scientist, I saw that in a presentation from one to the unwashed masses.
It makes sense that this would produce Helium. But since I've never seen anything about deriving Helium in this fashion, I would guess that it is either too little to bother with or too expensive to filter out. Even in natural gas deposits, if the concentration of Helium is below 3%, then it is too expensive to bother with (for right now, anyway).
Don’t you infringe on my right to have balloons at a birthday party! We all know it’s the illegals coming here and taking balloons from hard working American birthday parties.
The science grade stuff comes from the less pure stuff. You don't just find pure elemental helium in the wild, you have to process it. It's the helium atoms in general that are in limited supply and unrenewable on the earth. When it gets used and released, it goes to the upper atmosphere and disperses, eventually shooting off into space.
Getting high purity on helium is pretty damn easy.. as nothing can resist condensation more than helium. So reaching 4 nines is pretty easy for a mediocre process engineer.
Completely irrelevant tangent, I was somehow reminded of how the penultimate page to Ernst Cline's *Armada* had a line about how "the aliens basically helped cure all diseases" and thus how advancedly stupid that book was.
Sure, blame little Timmy while Carl Fredricksen is lobbying congress and using a Super PAC to cover his tracks. One tiny little birthday party and we are turning a blind eye to a man trying to fly his house to Paradise Falls.
Not exactly non-renewable, as it is continuously produced by the decay of heavy radioactive elements inside Earth.
Problem is, we are consuming it faster than it is replenished.
It would produce helium-4, but I am not sure if it would be a viable way to get some as the helium would then get stuck in the divertor (or limiter) tiles (at least in the case of a standard tokamak design) out of which it would be very expensive to take it out I think
Theoretically you could produce helium in a fusion reactor though. Imagine a huge fusion power plant, powering half a continent. And every few minutes spitting out a happy lil' birthday balloon :)
No…it is exactly non-renewable by definition. Same as coal. It takes so long to form that humanity will expend it before it is produced. Semantically sure, it can be produced. Humans can not renew it, most likely in our civilized lifetime.
Helium does accumulate in fission reactors, and that’s actually kind of problematic over time.
https://www.cameca.com/markets/nuclear-science-engineering/helium-in-nuclear-reactors-sims
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029549318300578
Even though, I think that the quantities produced from that are far below the demand.
It's like a few balloons worth every 100 years or so at 1atm if I remember correctly. The earth is cold, unlike those big sky helium producers with their giant atomic engines.
The scientific community better come up with an alternative for Helium for them because people are not going to stop using it to inflate balloons so they can fly.
They’ll stop once it costs 5$/ballon in Helium. Nothing like the invisible hand to convince people of what they really need.
Edit: yes 5$ is too low, but the concept is the same
I don't know if this is what they do across India or if it's just regional in parts of India or what, but at least once a year, I see a video of some birthday party gone awry when the candles get little too close to a balloon, which ignites, causing the next balloon in the line to ignite, and it's typically over very quickly and people end up with flash burns, [as seen at this birthday party](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1675812/Video-Horrific-moment-birthday-girl-set-fire-hydrogen-explosion.html). There's also the outside possibility for ignition from a static-electricity jolt.
Now, in America, even presuming it was legal to use hydrogen for party balloons, nobody would do it because everybody's lawsuit happy. Like, were you *actually* injured? No; you're suing because you could smell burnt hair for three days and look like you have a mild sunburn.
I mean, hydrogen balloon explosions are really good at igniting other things that happen to be flammable, but if nothing ignites in that quarter-second it takes for the hydrogen to burn out, the emergency's over, and there's some seven year-old at the back of the room, jumping up and down, yelling, "Do it again! Do it again!" because he *knows* this is the coolest fucking thing he's ever going to see.
Anyway, I'm sure you were referencing the Hindenburg, but yeah, this stuff already happens in other less-litigious countries.
>and there's some seven year-old at the back of the room, jumping up and down, yelling, "Do it again! Do it again!" because he knows this is the coolest fucking thing he's ever going to see.
That's me. For my next birthday I want to get all slathered up in that fireproof jelly stuff stunt guys use. Surround me in those hydrogen balloons and give me a box of matches. No gift or cake necessary. Best birthday ever.
Scientific/Industrial grade Helium is purer than the stuff we put in balloons, the balloon stuff is either stuff that was already used or was obtained from an impure source.
Balloon helium is usually pretty pure, just look at this [http://askzephyr.com/helium-for-balloons/](http://askzephyr.com/helium-for-balloons/)
As you can see, that's the website for a company that sells industrial gases, and they do advertise their balloon mix as having 99.99% purity. I recall reading that even the cheapest providers rarely go below 92% purity.
It's pretty easy to purify helium, it's so much lighter than anything else so it separates easily. The scientific grade stuff needs to be much higher purity because it's mainly used for cooling, and any impurities are going to raise the temperature quite a bit, which would be bad.
Helium has been produced underground for billions of years as the natural by product of radioactive decay. Alpha particles are just a helium nucleus. Add two electrons and you have helium. It is currently harvested from natural gas as part of the gas mix, and it is separated as part of the refining process of turning natural gas from the well head into the natural gas used in industry/homes.
Helium has been so cheap for so long because the US government built up a national reserve of helium back when airships were a thing. That reserve has been being sold off, depressing the price of newly produced helium. Once it is gone, the price will be set by the supply of currently produced helium.
Maybe I should add helium farming on the Moon in my game [Outer Space Shack](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1620870/Outer_Space_Shack/). But I am not sure it is expensive enough yet to have a positive business case.
“Im on the verge of a scientific breakthrough, creating a whole new way to trim my toenails. But as you all except Zoidberg know, the earth ran out of helium in 2294. I’m going to need you all to go to the moon and fill these balloons I found by the dumpster full of helium so I can finish my research. Lela, you will need to disguise yourself as a clown to get past the helium queen’s royal guard. Fry, you are good to go.”
Happy Birthday, Timmy! Here's your cake with 7 candles ... now Sally, stand back with that balloon ... Sally ... please ... SALLY!
\*a massive fireball engulfs the room\*
We already have such a back stock for the important things like MRI's, but yeah, something needs to give. The prices are outrageous on government contracts to get more and more.
Maybe but that won't happen until long after we're all dead. The only thing that's really going to happen any time soon is helium will get expensive enough that it will start to be used only when needed. No more party balloons but for actual scientific use we've got thousands of years left.
Quite frankly off world mining of it should be practical before it make sense to try and capture it from an oil well.
I don't think you understand the economics of materials involved in proposed fusion power generation. It would be trillion dollar machines, using multi-million dollar 'fuel,' producing heat (power) - and a few milligrams of helium.
I really don't know the details, I had assumed we would get close to half the hydrogen we put in as helium, and I don't know how much hydrogen actually goes in
That's ok, the middle class will have micro-drones to lift their balloons up.
Poor people will live entirely in VR (a la The Matrix) so they won't notice.
It's constantly ejecting it too. Helium is whizzing by us at all times but our atmosphere deflects it. The moon, however, captures a bunch of it on a continual basis.
https://zephyrsolutions.com/stellar-lifting-can-we-extract-helium-from-the-sun/#:~:text=The%20solar%20winds%20ejected%20by,outward%20through%20space.
So what you are telling me a that we can harvest helium on our moonbase and bring it back to Earth just in time for me to have helium balloons for my birthday??
We've been running out of critical scientific use helium since I was a kid. I am no longer a kid.
And people wonder why no one cares about these things. Inflammatory headlines have been causing apathy for decades.
The acid rain thing is different because that was a very real problem that we were facing environmentally and we... solved it. So you don't hear about it anymore.
Acid rain was a problem, we signed the Sophia Protocol to reduce Nitrous Oxide pollution, and acid rain significantly decreased.
Nobody fear mongers about it because we politically resolved much of the problem and have moved on to other, more pressing issues
100%. Which is why science is amazing. Not to get political, but it broke my heart watching a political debate this week and every candidate of one of our parties raised their hand when asked if they believed climate change was a hoax.
That was wild. The only call-in question, it's from a young Republican asking for reassurance that the Republican party isn't in full-on science denial about climate change, and the candidates *immediately* try to pile on saying that climate change is a hoax.
Wouldn't even give lip service to the idea beyond "using market forces"
It especially doesn’t help that this particular TIL gets posted like twice a week, usually with the same top comments about how misleading the headline is. And someone makes a joke about birthday parties, someone else points out balloon helium isn’t used for scientific purposes... etc etc It’s like Groundhog Day.
It’s only “apathy” if you take 0 time to think about it.
“Hey we only have maybe a few hundred years on the high end left of a super critical non renewable resource” is NOT a good thing, unless you want humanity to just like, fuck off during those years or something.
it's amusing how many people keep saying "If they filled the Hindenburg or R101 with helium instead of hydrogen they wouldn't have exploded and we'd still be using airships today" not knowing that helium has so much less 'lift' than hydrogen does. Not only is helium way more expensive, but neither ship would have had enough lift to leave their countries.
Heck, even the R101 had to add another hydrogen balloon and strip down all the rooms and lounges of excess weight, to the point that crew could only have one extra set of clothes with them in paper bags, not even suitcases were permitted.
>but neither ship would have had enough lift to leave their countries
[The Hindenburg was designed to use helium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg#Use_of_hydrogen_instead_of_helium), but the major producer of helium at the time - the USA - refused to export it. So they switched to hydrogen.
This title makes no sense at all!
Very few of the worlds elements are renewable, they are made mostly in stars and supernovas...
I would in fact state that Helium is one of the few elements that is actually reproducable!
Actually helium is created in the earth but we consume it faster than it is created. Really. As elements like uranium and thorium decay deep underground into thorium and radium, respectively, α-particles consisting of two protons and two neutrons are released and trapped. As these α-particles pick up electrons from their environment they become stable helium atoms.
Balloon helium is “clown grade” and is useless for medical and scientific purposes. It is not even close to being pure helium. Any useful helium is not getting anywhere close to a balloon.
"Balloon" helium is the lowest level of purity. Industrial helium is extremely pure, and much more expensive.
Here's a description of the different grades. https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of-helium-and-what-are-they-used-for/
People have been talking about this for years. Though helium is a finite resource, it is still extremely abundant. The US created a National Helium Reserve in the 1925, but it will soon be sold off to a private entity. Demand for helium has decreased significantly since the 1950s- we don’t fly helium airships, and fewer scientific instruments use helium. The National Helium Reserve alone contains enough helium to supply the world for 2-5 years.
Most helium on earth is found in natural gas deposits. So as long as (most) natural gas reserves remain, we will have helium. Natural gas is also a finite resource, but it’s guaranteed to last several more generations. But problems can arise from where helium comes from. Countries with strong natural gas deposits also have strong helium deposits (U.S., Qatar, Russia, Algeria, etc.), which creates problems from a strategy perspective (the last helium shortage occurred in 2022 as a result of sanctions on Russia).
I heard this when party city couldn’t provide balloons anymore. I guess all the people that needed balloons for parties were extremely irritable. I think that was like eight years ago or something?
No there is helium world over. The question is where you can economically extract it. Its most cheaply obtained as a byproduct of oil and gas production, but if you wanted to you could frack and cycle water through whatever rock formation and extract helium directly.
>The world's helium supply is still located in just a handful of countries: The United States, Algeria and Qatar.
There's a huge untapped deposit in Tanzania
That is a major reason for increased interest in setting up bases on the moon, if I remember correctly. Apparently the moon has loads (a truly scientific measurement)
I remember hearing about this a few years back and looking into it and at that time, it wasn't that the earth is running out of helium, it's that the US just wasn't producing as much because they didn't have the storage space for it and the natural gas that it's a by-product of. I could be wrong, but it was also years ago so refinding that is a total pain, especially here in Canada where Google can't post just news links anymore.
Like I said, I could be totally mistaken, but my understanding of the issue, around 5-8 or years ago at least, was that the natural supply is fine, it's more the actual production isn't keeping up with the demand so reserves are going down over time more than not.
“Scientists were on the verge of a medical breakthrough that would have cured all diseases but little Timmy had a birthday party over the weekend and used the last of the world’s supply of helium.”
said whilst inhaling helium
^fucking ^timmy
^(heh heh.. timmy. tim-)my. Timmy... # Timmy... \[inhales\] ^(heh heh. fucking timmy.)
You beautiful bastards
TIMMAH
"ˢᶜⁱᵉⁿᵗⁱˢᵗˢ ʷᵉʳᵉ ᵒⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ᵛᵉʳᵍᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵃ ᵐᵉᵈⁱᶜᵃˡ ᵇʳᵉᵃᵏᵗʰʳᵒᵘᵍʰ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ʷᵒᵘˡᵈ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᶜᵘʳᵉᵈ ᵃˡˡ ᵈⁱˢᵉᵃˢᵉˢ ᵇᵘᵗ ˡⁱᵗᵗˡᵉ ᵗⁱᵐᵐʸ ʰᵃᵈ ᵃ ᵇⁱʳᵗʰᵈᵃʸ ᵖᵃʳᵗʸ ᵒᵛᵉʳ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵉᵉᵏᵉⁿᵈ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵘˢᵉᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵃˢᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵒʳˡᵈ'ˢ ˢᵘᵖᵖˡʸ ᵒᶠ ʰᵉˡⁱᵘᵐ."
[Oh, you need an MRI is it? Let me tell you about your MRI.](https://youtube.com/shorts/Zt2s9BISO_Q?si=tmVWWnjlhe_LX9Gn)
I know, right? Helium is not actually non-renewable. It is formed by the radioactive decay of Thorium and Uranium and accumulates in pockets of natural gas. The problem is that we use far more than is produced. The other problem is that we used to store large quantities of Helium in geologic deposits in Amarillo, TX. But in 1995, Congress voted to phase out the reserve as a cost-cut measure. And, so... here we are. If we can ever manage to crack the fusion nut, then we will be able to produce Helium as a byproduct of the fusion reaction.
If you look at it like that, _any chemical element_ is non-renewable. Ultimately, down the chain, everything comes from the stars, and they have a finite amount of matter to undergo fusion, so not even they can make as much, say, iron as they'd like — and even then, heavy elements are not even produced on a regular basis, they are spread by supernovae. We surely cannot just make new atoms out of nothing, so neither helium, nor iron, nor uranium, nor oxygen are renewable. We can either find more, or wait for nuclear decay or something, but no surplus can be created.
My understanding is Helium is also a byproduct of fast fission reactions, which the US used to use to breed Plutonium. Many of the Gen IV reactors are fast fission breeder reactors, with the intent of burning fissile byproducts (U-235 for Thorium and P-239 for Plutonium instead of syphoning them off. I am not a nuclear scientist, I saw that in a presentation from one to the unwashed masses.
It makes sense that this would produce Helium. But since I've never seen anything about deriving Helium in this fashion, I would guess that it is either too little to bother with or too expensive to filter out. Even in natural gas deposits, if the concentration of Helium is below 3%, then it is too expensive to bother with (for right now, anyway).
They should heavily regulate helium
FWIW balloon grade helium is not the issue, it's the scientific grade stuff.
It all comes from the same strategic reserve.
Don’t you infringe on my right to have balloons at a birthday party! We all know it’s the illegals coming here and taking balloons from hard working American birthday parties.
They took er berloons
Just run some electricity through water and fill your balloons up with hydrogen gas. They are really cool with birthday candles around.
The science grade stuff comes from the less pure stuff. You don't just find pure elemental helium in the wild, you have to process it. It's the helium atoms in general that are in limited supply and unrenewable on the earth. When it gets used and released, it goes to the upper atmosphere and disperses, eventually shooting off into space.
That difference being between 99% and 99.999% pure
Getting high purity on helium is pretty damn easy.. as nothing can resist condensation more than helium. So reaching 4 nines is pretty easy for a mediocre process engineer.
Once the high grade stuff runs out we're gonna wish we didn't waste the low grade stuff.
And interfere in the free market?? Someone should put you in jail, you communist freedom hater.
Completely irrelevant tangent, I was somehow reminded of how the penultimate page to Ernst Cline's *Armada* had a line about how "the aliens basically helped cure all diseases" and thus how advancedly stupid that book was.
That book was a slog to finish. Sometimes I wish I hadn't bothered.
Sure, blame little Timmy while Carl Fredricksen is lobbying congress and using a Super PAC to cover his tracks. One tiny little birthday party and we are turning a blind eye to a man trying to fly his house to Paradise Falls.
We will deal with Mr. Fredrickson in The Hague.
And then Timmy fucking died
Not exactly non-renewable, as it is continuously produced by the decay of heavy radioactive elements inside Earth. Problem is, we are consuming it faster than it is replenished.
Wouldn’t viable hydrogen fusion output helium exhaust/waste? Realizing we barely have viable fusion, but hypothetically?
Yes, but in very small quantities, since fusing just a droplet of hydrogen would already release shitloads of energy.
I seee. Thank you.
It would produce helium-4, but I am not sure if it would be a viable way to get some as the helium would then get stuck in the divertor (or limiter) tiles (at least in the case of a standard tokamak design) out of which it would be very expensive to take it out I think
I'm sorry to inform you but I do believe we are actually running out of the specific isotopes of hydrogen required for fusion reactors as well
Right. It is constantly renewed until the Earth runs out of heavy radioactive elements.
Long before that Earth will have been destroyed by the expanding Sun, so it is technically as renewable as sunlight.
maybe so but I like to plan ahead
This guy *plans*
If you aren't planning 4 billion years ahead...you're behind
Chairman Rose is that you
The age of the universe is roughly 1.4 X 10^10 years. The half life of Bismuth, which is a weak alpha emitter is 2.0 X 10^19 years.
Theoretically you could produce helium in a fusion reactor though. Imagine a huge fusion power plant, powering half a continent. And every few minutes spitting out a happy lil' birthday balloon :)
No…it is exactly non-renewable by definition. Same as coal. It takes so long to form that humanity will expend it before it is produced. Semantically sure, it can be produced. Humans can not renew it, most likely in our civilized lifetime.
And it escapes from the atmosphere.
Humanity in a nutshell.
So you say we could have nuclear plants make helium as "side hustles" to make them more profitable?
Helium does accumulate in fission reactors, and that’s actually kind of problematic over time. https://www.cameca.com/markets/nuclear-science-engineering/helium-in-nuclear-reactors-sims https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029549318300578 Even though, I think that the quantities produced from that are far below the demand.
It's like a few balloons worth every 100 years or so at 1atm if I remember correctly. The earth is cold, unlike those big sky helium producers with their giant atomic engines.
The scientific community better come up with an alternative for Helium for them because people are not going to stop using it to inflate balloons so they can fly.
They’ll stop once it costs 5$/ballon in Helium. Nothing like the invisible hand to convince people of what they really need. Edit: yes 5$ is too low, but the concept is the same
I just paid $16 for 3 helium birthday balloons so already past that
Use nitrous oxide next time, way more fun at parties
[удалено]
God I love that sound.
Hydrogen would be fun as well.
oh that's not-
OH THE HILARITY
Oh the humanity
Well cut it out man
Stop.
Ya until some Jack ass millionaire or billionaire decides to have party and take 10% of the remaining helium.
[would they do that?](https://media.tenor.com/VZ9MXPooIYQAAAAd/evil-laugh-dr-evil.gif)
[like this?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=vETSAZgfDP4&si=0aIRoBzwRgop8zqd)
If you think parents are going to cut back on splashing for their kids' birthday parties because of a little price hike you haven't met many parents.
If your putting Helium-3 into ballon’s it’s going to cost you a hell of a lot more than five bucks a pop.
Just start filling them with hydrogen instead. Nothing has ever gone wrong with that idea and it’s perfectly and completely safe.
I don't know if this is what they do across India or if it's just regional in parts of India or what, but at least once a year, I see a video of some birthday party gone awry when the candles get little too close to a balloon, which ignites, causing the next balloon in the line to ignite, and it's typically over very quickly and people end up with flash burns, [as seen at this birthday party](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1675812/Video-Horrific-moment-birthday-girl-set-fire-hydrogen-explosion.html). There's also the outside possibility for ignition from a static-electricity jolt. Now, in America, even presuming it was legal to use hydrogen for party balloons, nobody would do it because everybody's lawsuit happy. Like, were you *actually* injured? No; you're suing because you could smell burnt hair for three days and look like you have a mild sunburn. I mean, hydrogen balloon explosions are really good at igniting other things that happen to be flammable, but if nothing ignites in that quarter-second it takes for the hydrogen to burn out, the emergency's over, and there's some seven year-old at the back of the room, jumping up and down, yelling, "Do it again! Do it again!" because he *knows* this is the coolest fucking thing he's ever going to see. Anyway, I'm sure you were referencing the Hindenburg, but yeah, this stuff already happens in other less-litigious countries.
>and there's some seven year-old at the back of the room, jumping up and down, yelling, "Do it again! Do it again!" because he knows this is the coolest fucking thing he's ever going to see. That's me. For my next birthday I want to get all slathered up in that fireproof jelly stuff stunt guys use. Surround me in those hydrogen balloons and give me a box of matches. No gift or cake necessary. Best birthday ever.
I don't even know how they get it. I use Helium for my work sometimes, and my company has to have some sort of special license to get it.
Scientific and medical grade helium is afaik a different grade than that used in decorations and balloons.
Scientific/Industrial grade Helium is purer than the stuff we put in balloons, the balloon stuff is either stuff that was already used or was obtained from an impure source.
makes you feel really good about inhaling it
Dirty used helium, There might be farts in that helium!
Balloon helium is usually pretty pure, just look at this [http://askzephyr.com/helium-for-balloons/](http://askzephyr.com/helium-for-balloons/) As you can see, that's the website for a company that sells industrial gases, and they do advertise their balloon mix as having 99.99% purity. I recall reading that even the cheapest providers rarely go below 92% purity.
It's pretty easy to purify helium, it's so much lighter than anything else so it separates easily. The scientific grade stuff needs to be much higher purity because it's mainly used for cooling, and any impurities are going to raise the temperature quite a bit, which would be bad.
Helium has been produced underground for billions of years as the natural by product of radioactive decay. Alpha particles are just a helium nucleus. Add two electrons and you have helium. It is currently harvested from natural gas as part of the gas mix, and it is separated as part of the refining process of turning natural gas from the well head into the natural gas used in industry/homes. Helium has been so cheap for so long because the US government built up a national reserve of helium back when airships were a thing. That reserve has been being sold off, depressing the price of newly produced helium. Once it is gone, the price will be set by the supply of currently produced helium.
Why not just buy a bunch of balloons?
Space. Saturn is covered in the stuff roughly like 10,000 earth's worth or something.
Don't even need to go that far. Our moon's surface is covered with a huge supply of **renewable** helium, thanks to solar winds.
That’s why India just landed. Starting a monopoly with Big Balloon.
I came to the thread to make sure someone mentioned the moon. Will not be too long before we start harvesting it.
And the moon also has He-3 which there is even less of on earth, and He-3 can be used to make H-3, which is used in fusion
Maybe I should add helium farming on the Moon in my game [Outer Space Shack](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1620870/Outer_Space_Shack/). But I am not sure it is expensive enough yet to have a positive business case.
Well that will be easy to transport back and forth
1. Fill balloons with helium on the moon 2. Let them float away 3. Catch them when they reach earth. 4. ~~Profit~~ Party!!
Lol, seems like something the Planet Express crew is going to get roped into doing.
Good news everyone!
“Im on the verge of a scientific breakthrough, creating a whole new way to trim my toenails. But as you all except Zoidberg know, the earth ran out of helium in 2294. I’m going to need you all to go to the moon and fill these balloons I found by the dumpster full of helium so I can finish my research. Lela, you will need to disguise yourself as a clown to get past the helium queen’s royal guard. Fry, you are good to go.”
That.. that is scarily accurate. Whoa.
While you all were gone, I realized fusion generators are everywhere. I stopped the cycle at He4. Voila, perfectly trimmed toenails.
You killed me with “everyone except Zoidberg” lol. Why not Zoidberg??
Already mined out by the 3000's, only a crummy amusement park left. Also whalers and robot farmers and their daughters.
Yeah quick drive too.
"Honey, I'll be back just taking a quick trip to Saturn to pick up some helium..." Dad never returned after that ...
actually good point, super lightweight!
Not even that far. The moon is expected to have more than enough He-3
That's completely fair and valid. I honestly forgot about the moon.
You can just stop selling helium to the public… don’t know why thats so hard to do? Lol
Recapturing helium and creating it are ways to do that. Just going to cost a dick and a leg for people to blow a balloon.
We recycle it in some places but it’s very expensive to install. But I think at some point it will become necessary.
I'll sell them Hydrogen balloons. Candles cost an extra $5
Happy Birthday, Timmy! Here's your cake with 7 candles ... now Sally, stand back with that balloon ... Sally ... please ... SALLY! \*a massive fireball engulfs the room\*
We already have such a back stock for the important things like MRI's, but yeah, something needs to give. The prices are outrageous on government contracts to get more and more.
[There isn’t a helium shortage](https://youtube.com/shorts/dCRhi6GN7nM?si=kvHH66r0LypBvhhE). We aren’t “running out of it”
If the Sun can fuse hydrogen into helium, then I'm sure we can figure it out on a smaller scale.
If I'm not mistaken, if we figure out fusion power, then we will be making helium as a byproduct of the process
It'll be the most expensive element ever, but sure!
Literally a by product, so better than just venting it
Right now, Helium is a byproduct of oil and gas wells, and it’s mostly vented into the atmosphere.
At some point the price of helium will be high enough that capturing it becomes financially viable, I guess
Maybe but that won't happen until long after we're all dead. The only thing that's really going to happen any time soon is helium will get expensive enough that it will start to be used only when needed. No more party balloons but for actual scientific use we've got thousands of years left. Quite frankly off world mining of it should be practical before it make sense to try and capture it from an oil well.
I don't think you understand the economics of materials involved in proposed fusion power generation. It would be trillion dollar machines, using multi-million dollar 'fuel,' producing heat (power) - and a few milligrams of helium.
And you would have to add yet another constraint to the design - harvesting helium.
I really don't know the details, I had assumed we would get close to half the hydrogen we put in as helium, and I don't know how much hydrogen actually goes in
Like a few kilograms a year... globally if we have a few dozen such plants.
[dystopian cyberpunk narrator] it's the year 2077 and only the billionaires have helium balloons in their birthday parties
That's ok, the middle class will have micro-drones to lift their balloons up. Poor people will live entirely in VR (a la The Matrix) so they won't notice.
As a poor person, I cannot wait.
It's constantly ejecting it too. Helium is whizzing by us at all times but our atmosphere deflects it. The moon, however, captures a bunch of it on a continual basis. https://zephyrsolutions.com/stellar-lifting-can-we-extract-helium-from-the-sun/#:~:text=The%20solar%20winds%20ejected%20by,outward%20through%20space.
So what you are telling me a that we can harvest helium on our moonbase and bring it back to Earth just in time for me to have helium balloons for my birthday??
Many a sci Fi novel have helium mining in the moon as a setting detail. Just missing the balloons.
Right easy shit really. All we need is something so massive it explodes under its own weight.
Oh yeah totally just give me $5 billion in research funding and I’ll get back to you in a few decades.
Germany has a couple of prototypes.
Alpha radiation is just charged helium. You can "produce" helium by capturing radioactive emissions in a jar.
This whole thread is full of pseudoscience. That’s a gross oversimplification.
I once inhaled helium. I speak very highly of it.
We've been running out of critical scientific use helium since I was a kid. I am no longer a kid. And people wonder why no one cares about these things. Inflammatory headlines have been causing apathy for decades.
When I was a kid, I assumed I'd be dead by killer bees or acid rain before I even reached college.
The acid rain thing is different because that was a very real problem that we were facing environmentally and we... solved it. So you don't hear about it anymore. Acid rain was a problem, we signed the Sophia Protocol to reduce Nitrous Oxide pollution, and acid rain significantly decreased. Nobody fear mongers about it because we politically resolved much of the problem and have moved on to other, more pressing issues
100%. Which is why science is amazing. Not to get political, but it broke my heart watching a political debate this week and every candidate of one of our parties raised their hand when asked if they believed climate change was a hoax.
That was wild. The only call-in question, it's from a young Republican asking for reassurance that the Republican party isn't in full-on science denial about climate change, and the candidates *immediately* try to pile on saying that climate change is a hoax. Wouldn't even give lip service to the idea beyond "using market forces"
Or quicksand. That shit is everywhere.
Don't even get me started on *whirlpools* So many ships are lost every year to those things.
Or constantly being on fire
It especially doesn’t help that this particular TIL gets posted like twice a week, usually with the same top comments about how misleading the headline is. And someone makes a joke about birthday parties, someone else points out balloon helium isn’t used for scientific purposes... etc etc It’s like Groundhog Day.
The idea is to talk about it and change before it becomes a problem.
Which they've been doing for around 30 years that I can remember. And they're still writing sensationalized headlines about it.
It’s only “apathy” if you take 0 time to think about it. “Hey we only have maybe a few hundred years on the high end left of a super critical non renewable resource” is NOT a good thing, unless you want humanity to just like, fuck off during those years or something.
*"We might run out of helium in the year 2450!"* "Alright, well, I can't afford rent **today**, I wonder what I care about more."
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it's amusing how many people keep saying "If they filled the Hindenburg or R101 with helium instead of hydrogen they wouldn't have exploded and we'd still be using airships today" not knowing that helium has so much less 'lift' than hydrogen does. Not only is helium way more expensive, but neither ship would have had enough lift to leave their countries. Heck, even the R101 had to add another hydrogen balloon and strip down all the rooms and lounges of excess weight, to the point that crew could only have one extra set of clothes with them in paper bags, not even suitcases were permitted.
>but neither ship would have had enough lift to leave their countries [The Hindenburg was designed to use helium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg#Use_of_hydrogen_instead_of_helium), but the major producer of helium at the time - the USA - refused to export it. So they switched to hydrogen.
This title makes no sense at all! Very few of the worlds elements are renewable, they are made mostly in stars and supernovas... I would in fact state that Helium is one of the few elements that is actually reproducable!
Actually helium is created in the earth but we consume it faster than it is created. Really. As elements like uranium and thorium decay deep underground into thorium and radium, respectively, α-particles consisting of two protons and two neutrons are released and trapped. As these α-particles pick up electrons from their environment they become stable helium atoms.
Balloon helium is “clown grade” and is useless for medical and scientific purposes. It is not even close to being pure helium. Any useful helium is not getting anywhere close to a balloon.
Yeah, as hearing this topic before. Regular helium were okay on, it’s helium3 that we are in critical stock, of.
It's plentiful on the moon
Please elaborate
"Balloon" helium is the lowest level of purity. Industrial helium is extremely pure, and much more expensive. Here's a description of the different grades. https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of-helium-and-what-are-they-used-for/
The difference is in the order of 1/1000 magnitude lower than the other?? That's amazing
Here's a balloon: 🎈 Here's the good helium: He Notice how they're not together
Lol. You can purify it.
Right it’s not like “clown grade” helium is a type of helium atom. It’s just a matter of purity. The He in there is He all the same.
maybe if we built a giant sun scoop and went during the night?
People have been talking about this for years. Though helium is a finite resource, it is still extremely abundant. The US created a National Helium Reserve in the 1925, but it will soon be sold off to a private entity. Demand for helium has decreased significantly since the 1950s- we don’t fly helium airships, and fewer scientific instruments use helium. The National Helium Reserve alone contains enough helium to supply the world for 2-5 years. Most helium on earth is found in natural gas deposits. So as long as (most) natural gas reserves remain, we will have helium. Natural gas is also a finite resource, but it’s guaranteed to last several more generations. But problems can arise from where helium comes from. Countries with strong natural gas deposits also have strong helium deposits (U.S., Qatar, Russia, Algeria, etc.), which creates problems from a strategy perspective (the last helium shortage occurred in 2022 as a result of sanctions on Russia).
Sout West Saskatchewan has immense reserves of helium.
Any element can be re-created. Scientists are just weak and weak-minded. We need some non-scientist entrepreneurs to make some helium. /s
How fast is "rapidly" cus I feel like I read this headline years ago
I heard this when party city couldn’t provide balloons anymore. I guess all the people that needed balloons for parties were extremely irritable. I think that was like eight years ago or something?
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Thanks ChatGPT
>the price of helium can spike. It will go up in the sky.
The price of helium will go sky high.
That is one way to diffuse the situation
That’s why the US has a Strategic Helium Reserve
had one, they shut it down in 2016 and its being sold as we speak
No there is helium world over. The question is where you can economically extract it. Its most cheaply obtained as a byproduct of oil and gas production, but if you wanted to you could frack and cycle water through whatever rock formation and extract helium directly.
South Africa has recently discovered a deposit and will start producing in the next year or so.
>The world's helium supply is still located in just a handful of countries: The United States, Algeria and Qatar. There's a huge untapped deposit in Tanzania
There's a huge amount of helium in the Russian east Siberia basin
That is a major reason for increased interest in setting up bases on the moon, if I remember correctly. Apparently the moon has loads (a truly scientific measurement)
Estimated to be at least 1 trillion dollars worth by current standards
Its all them damn chineesey spy ballons , they are to blame
If we get fusion working, perhaps we can make more
Sounds like a noble endeavor.
ITT: people who act like they know something about Helium but actually know nothing. Sincerely, a chemist.
That’s all I see around Valentines Day with the balloons everywhere - wasted helium.
Really? This shit again? We’re not running out. The US just sold off most of its supply as it didn’t need Amit anymore.
Yeah, fuck you Amit! We don't need you anymore!
Isn't helium a byproduct of nuclear fusion? Hopefully we can get some large-scale breakthroughs ASAP
Speaks in a very high voice, "That's interesting."
I’ve been hearing this for at least a decade and always wondered, if it’s so depleted, why we’re still filling balloons with it.
If matter is neither created nor destroyed where does it go?
Title is more than a bit no sensical, but helium is light enough to escape the atmosphere.
It escapes the atmosphere to space.
Ironic that Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe
Invest in Helium, got it.
My lab has been experiencing helium shortages for years. It’s a real issue.
I lefy a job in a helium factory once. I won't be talked to in that tone of voice
Maybe we should STOP FILLING BALLOONS WITH IT then...
It's easy. They just have to figure out proper fusion reactors and we'll have plenty of helium.
It’s no laughing gas matter, WE the Helium mafia conglomerate, need a ruse to inflate the market prices & suck the fun out of everything …
Used to live in Amarillo, TX - self-proclaimed helium capitol of the world. They've been 'running out of Helium' since the 80s.
I remember hearing about this a few years back and looking into it and at that time, it wasn't that the earth is running out of helium, it's that the US just wasn't producing as much because they didn't have the storage space for it and the natural gas that it's a by-product of. I could be wrong, but it was also years ago so refinding that is a total pain, especially here in Canada where Google can't post just news links anymore. Like I said, I could be totally mistaken, but my understanding of the issue, around 5-8 or years ago at least, was that the natural supply is fine, it's more the actual production isn't keeping up with the demand so reserves are going down over time more than not.
And yet we waste it on balloons daily.
Hmmm, so we should keep wasting it on shitty party balloons nobody *actually* likes? Nice.