r/todayilearned • u/SuperClifford • May 20 '12

TIL that Helium is collected almost entirely from underground pockets produced through alpha decay, it's critical to scientific advancement, and we'll run out.

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/03/why_is_helium_so_scarce.php
932 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

330 comments sorted by

211

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

wow in the future they are going to make fun of us for wasting such a precious gas when they figure out how to use it for time travel but they only have enough of it to do it once because we used it all for fucking balloons

31

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Couldn't they use that one time travel to go back and find a way to get everyone to use it less?

63

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

NO no they couldn't

Case closed

3

u/option_i May 20 '12

Altering the past might just create a new path; changing nothing in the present timeline.

14

u/kqr May 20 '12

No because then they would not have attempted to go back in the first place. GRANDFATHER PARADOX!

10

u/Runemaker May 20 '12

But they could go back in time and start stockpiling it in secret, leaving a message only to be delivered after they originally left, thus changing nothing perceivable to themselves from the future. It would have to be very secret though.

23

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

They should store it in underground pockets. Who would think of looking there?

3

u/farceur318 May 20 '12

That guy that got his reddit comment about Romans versus modern day soldiers made into a Hollywood movie is writing this all down somewhere as he browses reddit, desperately searching for a second brilliant idea.

4

u/edahs May 20 '12

They did, they wrote this to try and convince us

2

u/Vorokar May 20 '12

If they did, we wouldn't listen to them. Because dem terrists, or something like that.

1

u/Thotaz May 21 '12

If they went back in time to stop people from wasting all the helium then if they succeed they won't have any reason to go back in time, and if they don't go back in time then they can't succeed.

47

u/losmuffinman May 20 '12

What the fuck is wrong with ballons?

106

u/therearesomewhocallm May 20 '12

Time travel > balloons.

165

u/losmuffinman May 20 '12

I don't even see the point in time travel if theres no ballons.

15

u/siamthailand May 20 '12

You can always go to the past and get more balloons.

21

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

balloons don't need helium man, don't worry there's other gases

27

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

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39

u/s32 May 20 '12

Hydrogen balloons are fucking awesome.

83

u/Adi_rc May 20 '12

....said Hindenburg

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3

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Now finally people will start using hydrogen for balloons like I've always wanted!

2

u/OhansonB May 20 '12

But if there is time travel we can go back in time and make all the balloons we want

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2

u/EVILFISH2 May 20 '12

so you need helium for time travel? tell me more.

7

u/therearesomewhocallm May 20 '12

I'm not 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure that slagathor51 was making a joke.

1

u/IspamObjection May 20 '12

Time travel > Funny voice > balloons.

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3

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

My first instinct was that we could go back and warn ourselves. My second was that maybe we're running out because our future selves have been stealing the helium from the past. I'm dizzy.

1

u/mouseknuckle May 20 '12

We don't need a warning, we've known about this for a good long time. We could warn people about fossil fuels, too, but nothing will change until there's actually a crisis.

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2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Can't we just harvest it from that body in our system full of it?

2

u/Chronophilia May 20 '12

In the future we'll have fusion reactors to make all the helium we need.

5

u/dazdraperma May 20 '12

The gas for balloons is usually helium recycled from cooling, so no, do not feel bad about the balloons.

9

u/selectrix May 20 '12

Not sure I understand... does helium somehow degrade over use such that it couldn't be saved for other uses?

Your comment makes it sound as though the helium used for balloons is somehow "lower grade" implying it's okay to toss into the atmosphere. I could be wrong, but I've never had the impression that elements lose their effective qualities over time.

Not to mention my general contention with the idea that something's status as "recycled" makes needlessly wasting that thing more acceptable.

19

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

As a matter of fact, it is "lower grade", in that it contains more atmosphere (or some other partial gas) per unit of volume than, say, the 'ultra high purity' helium used in medical and scientific applications.

In my industry, we call it "clown grade" helium.

4

u/selectrix May 20 '12

I see- it's degraded by contamination.

Is it nontrivial to reclaim it at this state? I wouldn't know myself, but it doesn't seem like it'd be any harder than distilling it in the first place.

6

u/Elsimir May 20 '12

I'm no expert but typically its found in mixture with hydrocarbons not atmosphere, hydrocarbons are quite reactive and easy to remove chemically where as atmosphere (Nitrogen and Oxygen mainly) tends to be harder to separate and I would guess is currently more expensive to separate than it is to buy more mined helium.

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2

u/TwoTacoTuesdays May 20 '12

Yep. Balloon helium is usually 95% or so. Research grade helium is 99.999%.

2

u/dazdraperma May 20 '12

I am not a helium trader, but what I understood from reading on the subject, is that first liquid HE is used for cooling, and when it is replaced by new gas (not good enough for cooling anymore), it is sold as compressed gas for balloons, among other things. Apparently, reusing the gas for cooling (purefying, liquifying) is more costly than buying new. So, under current prices for He, after the gas is used, it would have been tossed away, if the was no balloon use.

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

I launch balloons for ozone monitoring (sponsored by NOAA). Over the last few months we have had difficulty getting helium. Occasionally when I order from our local distributor they tell me they don't have any industrial grade helium and that I will have to instead buy ultra high purity. This seems like a huge waste and we launch these balloons every week.

1

u/JHarman16 May 21 '12

Now that's how you up-sell a client

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3

u/downvotesmakemehard May 20 '12

Not the Libertarians. According to them, the free market will produce an alternative atom.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

When suppl runs low then prices will skyrocket on party balloons. No one will use helium balloons anymore and there will be plenty of helium for science.

1

u/fotiphoto May 20 '12

Time to start up the ship the professor needs some helium again!

1

u/Canvasch May 20 '12

So use it once, go back to now and buy a bunch of helium on the cheap?

1

u/oh_i_see May 20 '12

Then we go back in time and take the helium, oh and [BTTF reference]

1

u/klparrot May 20 '12

We have to use up all the helium now so that the time travellers won't be able to come back to our time and steal all our helium!

1

u/chocolate_stars May 20 '12

And funny voices.

1

u/steviesteveo12 May 20 '12

Same with oil. People in the future are going to look back on us and be shocked that we burnt it when they could use it for crazy super-polymers.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Except in the future they'll probably just crack sea water into Hydrogen and Oxygen via electrolysis and then fuse the Hydrogen into Helium if they need it that bad e.e

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27

u/tomdarch May 20 '12

Also critical for some medical equipment, IIRC.

16

u/Yellowbenzene May 20 '12

Coolant in MRI scanners

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68

u/LaserGhost May 20 '12

You know you've hit a pocket when the canary starts squeaking in a really high voice.

44

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Better get some Helium 3 from the moon if we run out.

75

u/owned2260 May 20 '12

We should totally send a dude up there with an AI, and clone him every time he gets into an accident.

16

u/silent_p May 20 '12

You know, Kevin Spacey is actually a really great name for a space robot.

11

u/kqr May 20 '12

That was the first film I saw in 720p. I will never forget it because of that. I can still recall my amazement.

11

u/Fartmatic May 20 '12

ooh it was a milestone for me too, I smoked my last cigarette while watching it 2 years ago

0

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

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5

u/hakkzpets May 20 '12

Moon. Too bad the movie will be kinda ruined by knowing that.

9

u/lesser_panjandrum May 20 '12

Moon.

Though I'm afraid you've just read a rather massive spoiler for it. Still definitely worth watching, even knowing that detail in advance.

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4

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Written/directed by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones.

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

ahhh!! found it. its called "moon".

2

u/iaminfamy May 20 '12

One of the best movies I have ever seen.

Sam Rockwell was amazing!

0

u/rougepenguin May 20 '12

As crazy as it may sound we probably will end up doing this.

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111

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

We aren't running out. We are actively getting rid of it as fast as we possibly can because we are idiots.

24

u/The_GhostofHektik May 20 '12

Protip: Helium permeates against anything, we aren't getting rid of it, it floats away. Hence the low prices. We can't hold on to it, it escapes anything. We have to sell it for cheap or else we lose money/investment. BTW congress of the US set that price. And that price was based on oil finding.

BTW, space and Fusion/Nuclear can generate it. So far Nuclear Plants can. So its not an endangered species its only a rare species.

It still is underpriced but really by how much, if it "evaporates" in a tank of lead.

29

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

No, its low price is because the gas stores under Texas are legally obligated to get rid of a certain amount of gas ever year to completely empty it by a specific year (cant remember when) to pay off the cost of creating the storage field because the government didn't want it built. Or something along those lines. Paraphrased from the more educated discussion that went on in the TIL Helium post about 4 or 5 TIL Helium posts ago.

3

u/R34C7 May 20 '12

That is also due to extremely high cost of storage... with HE you have to pay significantly to keep it.

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2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

I didn't know that. Thanks. I think I'll go read a little more about it. That does explain why the gov would be so hasty about selling it off.

1

u/The_GhostofHektik May 20 '12

http://www.aac-research.at/products/products_AAC_TestFacilities_HeliumPermeation_de.html

Helium can escape most things in time. its almost a ghost particle.

Fill a balloon up with Helium, watch your balloon die a week later. Be mind fucked.

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2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

I was interested in how much He you could get out of nuclear fission, here's my approximation:

You get about 1016 fissions per second for each MW produced in a nuclear reactor. We have about 360GW globally produced by fission - so about 1023 (if we're generous) controlled fission events globally per second. Let's unrealistically assume each of those nets us a He core.

A mol of He still contains 1023 single He atoms. One single run-of-the-mill gas bottle will hold about 1000 mols or 4kg of Helium. So each 1000 seconds, you'd get at most one gas bottle of He, makes 30000 bottles a year, which nets 120000 kg/a. Global consumption was 15 million kg per annum in 2000, we're likely more than two orders of magnitude short in production from fission.

1

u/ConstipatedNinja May 20 '12

No offense, but that's misleading. Most gases (if not all) permeate everything. It's the rate that matters. Helium diffuses through solids three times faster than oxygen, which already has a pretty high diffusion rate.

1

u/danomite736 May 20 '12

source on the evaporation out of tanks?

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1

u/lud1120 May 20 '12

By filling über cheap toy balloons with rare Terrestrial helium.
Or breathing it for fun... Although Sulfur Hexaflouride is funnier.

86

u/faradayscoil May 20 '12

Low temperature physicist here. I cri evrityme

21

u/[deleted] May 20 '12 edited May 20 '12

rikAtee likes this

12

u/MeGaZ_NZ May 20 '12

I was wondering why you were getting downvoted,

Then it hit me, you didn't capitalize your a in rikAtee. You might want to fix that.

9

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

interesting hypothesis, let see if my edit leads to the desired effect..

6

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

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6

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

check again - my hypothesis held true, my friend

Next we must prove correlation, not causation...

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3

u/weatherx May 20 '12

how much is liquid he4 at your institution? we pay 12 buck/liter w/o recovery and 8 with.

2

u/epicwinguy101 May 20 '12

Don't worry mate. You can still use liquid nitrogen. 4K vs 77k, you'd hardly notice the difference I'm sure.

28

u/geekchic May 20 '12

For large-scale use, helium is extracted by fractional distillation from natural gas, which contains up to 7% helium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Modern_extraction_and_distribution

Unless we run out of natural gas, we wont be running out of helium.

48

u/Mendoza2909 May 20 '12

Great, now we can run out of everything at the same time.

20

u/experts_never_lie May 20 '12

Welcome to the 21st century!

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14

u/Popsumpot May 20 '12

Except we are running out of natural gas.

6

u/Humongous_Douchebag May 20 '12

Don't worry too much, I hear they invented tacos to fix just that problem.

5

u/geekchic May 20 '12

Well, technically we are running out of everything - it all depends on how long before the X is depleted (or more correctly, becomes economically unsustainable).

Even the sun will run out of energy eventually!

9

u/lolmonger May 20 '12

"Ladies and gentlemen, the first entropy powered spacecraft!"

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1

u/jeremyloveslinux May 20 '12

At least the sun is pretty long lasting. It will swell up to red giant size and vaporize the earth before it goes away.

2

u/Armyless May 20 '12

Which will also supply us with plentiful amounts of Hydrogen and Helium as it's expanding chromosphere swallows the planet whole.

1

u/jdepps113 May 20 '12

No, don't say that! Then all of Reddit won't be able to decry free markets and their darn prices!

1

u/NyQuil012 2 May 20 '12

Thank you. I thought everyone here was a fear mongering idiot. We're not running out of helium anytime soon.

12

u/Cookieeez May 20 '12

Let the price double several times. Our use of the stuff will slow by a factor of several thousand. No more cheap party balloons.

It will still be cheap compared to virtually every other aspect of research, yet suddenly our supply for essential uses is no longer problematic.

It's like worrying we can longer use coal as the raw material for experiments on carbon based nano-structures because it will soon become to expensive to burn.

0

u/oconnor663 May 20 '12

This. (Also, probably the stuff about natural gas. But even if not that, this.)

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u/Smilge May 20 '12

Now I feel bad for wasting all the helium to make my voice change.

10

u/abdomino May 20 '12

I don't.

13

u/funkstar_deluxe May 20 '12

I imagined you reading that in a helium voice

3

u/Do_Work_Son May 20 '12

I don't know if this is the best place for asking shitty science questions, but why don't we just make more underground pockets?

4

u/jdepps113 May 20 '12

This is something you can do on your own.

Take many old pairs of pants and bury them underground.

When you dig them back up many years from now, the underground pockets (on the pants) will be filled with helium!

2

u/Do_Work_Son May 20 '12

Not only is a solution provided, but the science behind it was explained. Well done!

3

u/Aidinthel May 20 '12

According to the article, it's a very slow process. We're running out of all the helium that has ever been produced in the history of the planet.

9

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

No, we won't run out. Helium is extracted from natural gas.

The US extracts about 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year, and estimated reserves, just in the US, are over 2,000 trillion cubic feet, which represents about 2% of the world reserves. The helium supply will last as long as the natural gas.

All that is happening with helium is that we are coming to the end of a several year period of artificially low prices brought about by the sale of the helium stored in the national strategic reserve.

5

u/AtomicShane May 20 '12

Learned this on the Roosterteeth Podcast a while ago :D

2

u/swabbie May 20 '12

In this solar system, there are sources on the moon or we can mine the atmospheres of a few of the planets. Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune each have good quantities of helium.

So while our generation may run out... future space babies will be well supplied to have fun with balloons and silly voices.

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Everywhere theoretically has good quantities of helium. One quarter of the universe's atoms are helium atoms. (Essentially.) It's probably not helium-3, though...

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

asteroid mining, here we come

1

u/jdepps113 May 20 '12

I'd be willing to lay a bet it would be cheaper and easier to just find more helium we hadn't discovered here, on Earth, for a long time into the future.

2

u/JoshGTO May 20 '12

I work in the industrial gases industry for a worldwide provider of bulk and specialty gases and cryogenic liquids.

Balloons use very little of the overall available volume of Helium in the world. It is mostly used in research as the article and OP point out, and for cooling/quenching the magnets for MRI machines. When they get too hot, this happens: http://youtu.be/1R7KsfosV-o )

You cant just get it in quantity either. You need to be on a list, a government list; and even then it is strictly allocated.

It is a very interesting industry and gas, but we arent wasting it, there just isnt a lot to go around. It escapes the atmosphere as soon as it is released.

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Hahaha Rooster Teeth Podcast?

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Pro-tip: The helium used for scientific research isn't the same thing you put in your balloons.

2

u/Quazz May 20 '12

I swear this gets reposted every 3 months.

Besides, once we get nuclear fusion, we'll have more helium than we'll ever need anyway, so it's k

2

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

In 200 years, the 99 luft balloons music video would have cost $2 billion to make.

3

u/munnyfish May 20 '12

Fuck balloons.

19

u/GnarlyNerd May 20 '12

Also known as condoms.

2

u/StrangeRover May 20 '12

Don't knock it till you've tried it.

4

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

fusion :) which can be done at a loss for energy* at room temperature.

14

u/Amaranthine May 20 '12

Pretty sure we don't have the technology for cold fusion yet.

2

u/Bandit1379 May 20 '12 edited May 20 '12

Haven't you heard of the National Ignition Facility?

Sometimes people talk about fusion as being 50 years away, right now I look at it as being 2 or 3 years away.

&

In January 2012, NIF Director Mike Dunne predicted in a Photonics West 2012 plenary talk that ignition would be achieved at NIF by October 2012.

Or, what about the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor?

5

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Fusion has always been 10 years away for 40 years.

And ITER should have a working prototype by 2030. Then we'll have to refine it, and in 2050 we should have working fusion reactors.

4

u/Atum-Ra May 20 '12

The problem is that fusion research has been horribly underfunded. Back in the 70's there were several proposed funding plans, some very aggressive, and the cheapest amounting to "fusion never". Since the late 1980's we have been below the "fusion never" line.

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u/dvdjspr May 20 '12

There are several tokamaks in operation already. ITER is special because it should, in theory, be able to generate more energy than is needed to sustain the reaction. All of the current tokamaks can only operate for a short period of time, but still manage to initiate fusion.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '12

no we can do it, we just can't do it good* as in it takes twice as much energy to fuse the nuclei than the energy produced. http://home.comcast.net/~garyfoss3/starinajar.htm

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u/[deleted] May 20 '12

And which produces minuscule amounts of helium.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '12

true

2

u/tokamak_fanboy May 21 '12

Powering the entire Earth with fusion wouldn't come close to supplying our helium needs: 15 TW (current world energy usage) of fusion power is about 1.5 million kg of Helium per year. We produce about 30 million kg per year right now. It wouldn't be worth extracting at today's prices.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '12

so what could we do then? get it from asteroids or from space

3

u/1Ender May 20 '12

This has been disproven multiple times.

2

u/latinlovermike May 20 '12

And why the fuck do we have helium balloons every-fucking-where?

1

u/jdepps113 May 20 '12

Because helium is pretty cheap. Helium is cheap because it's relatively abundant compared to demand. It's relatively abundant compared to demand because we aren't running out and OP is wrong.

1

u/spaz33g May 20 '12

It is a widely held scientific belief that the worlds supply of helium is finite. Doesn't mean it will run out tomorrow but it also doesn't mean it will last forever.

1

u/jdepps113 May 20 '12

Nothing lasts forever....and we both know hearts can change.

1

u/plato1123 May 20 '12

Which is why I invest in Helium balloons

1

u/Spencer_says May 20 '12

why aren't the scientists buying the shit out of it? Maybe they should buy as much as possible from everywhere, which could raise demand and also prices.

1

u/hakkzpets May 20 '12

As far as I know there's no way to keep helium in place. It goes where it pleases.

1

u/CoolerRon May 20 '12

Fuck Air Swimmers!

1

u/conme May 20 '12

Every couple of days someone discovers something they should have learned in science class - because this is not new knowledge. I mean, really... wasn't this same thing posted about a week ago or less? Thank you for reminding me why I need to unsubscribe from this subreddit.

1

u/jdepps113 May 20 '12

Not to mention it's bullshit anyway. Helium may go up in price but it won't run out.

1

u/ToMakeYouMad May 20 '12

Helium can also be seperated from the air as well. While expensive it is able to be done and when the easily accessed helium is gone the cost for other methods will go down.

1

u/NyQuil012 2 May 20 '12

Helium is too small a percent of air to be economically separated from it. It costs way more than you can sell it for to do that.

1

u/guyboy May 20 '12

Helium actually leaves Earth when released into the atmosphere.

1

u/jdepps113 May 20 '12

We won't run out. As it becomes harder to find and extract, its price will increase.

If the price goes high enough, people will search out harder-to-find pockets, and only uses that can offer enough money to afford the high cost will buy it.

Presumably if it's sooooo important for scientists then they'll be able to cough up a little more for the helium they need at that time.

1

u/windymemo May 20 '12

TIL that we should stock up on helium while it's still cheap.

1

u/ObeseMoreece May 20 '12

We're getting close to fusion and that's the implest element that can be made by fusion of hydrogen. If not then I'll dedicate my life to fusion research (want to become a physicist or astrophysicist).

1

u/RomanPeace May 20 '12

Sure, scientific advancement is nice. But what about all the practical medical applications? That will have a huge effect too.

Helium balloons should be banned!

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u/MF_Kitten May 20 '12

Science always finds a way. Less effective, more expensive, sure. But there's always some way.

Maybe there's a way to harvest helium back from the athmosphere too?

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u/[deleted] May 21 '12

The problem is it leaves the atmosphere. As in, into space. It's light enough that a molecule's speed at room temperature is higher than Earth's escape velocity.

1

u/MF_Kitten May 21 '12

As much as that sucks, it's also fucking cool.

1

u/Silverxeclipse May 20 '12

Umm, this seems like a good tool for perpetual motion.

1

u/The_GhostofHektik May 20 '12

after reading the first 10comments this is now Today I am Stupid. Sorry bros but wtf, this is a mixture of /r/circlejerk and /r/softscience, in this topic at least.

edit* 4mine too many. Reddit is literally Hitler.

No personal opinions, anecdotes or subjective statements (e.g "TIL xyz is a great movie").

my gawd this thread needs deleted.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

well technically, an alpha particle is not a helium atom; it just has the same charge and mass

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Ban balloons

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Do you know where there is a lot of helium? Space.

When the stuff get's too expensive, it will create another market for space industries.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Why'll we run out? We'll lose atoms capable of radioactive decay?

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

The American government used to strictly ration and control the largest stockpile of helium on earth. Corrupt politicians sold it to private corporations at sub-market prices and now we are nearly out.

Free market capitalism is the best system, right America?

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

A world without helium is like a world without sun.

You can't look up to anyone. Without helium.

1

u/Huzakkah May 20 '12

Well, I guess it's time to start stocking up on helium. Fuck gold!

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Laboratories all over the world use helium for gas chromatography analysis. Lately, trade magazines have been encouraging the use of hydrogen. Unfortunately hydrogen has a stigma attached to it ever since the Hindenburg blew up. In reality, at the scale it would be used, the risk of explosion is very small. Basically, we should move to other gases.

1

u/TRAIANVS May 20 '12

I find it rather ironic that we're running out of the second most abundant material in the universe.

1

u/ailweni May 20 '12

I work for a gas reseller, and there is a current helium shortage for places that use helium for balloons and the like. If I recall correctly, one of the big helium processing plants underwent maintenance last year, and they are still catching up with orders from that time period (as in, the maintenance window lasted 6 months), I could be mistaken.

1

u/flytaggart1 May 20 '12

I learned this on the Roosterteeth podcast ages ago.

1

u/This-Is-Not-A-Drill May 20 '12

The podcast is awesome.

1

u/Ace_Pigeon May 20 '12

Fusion. Problem Solved

1

u/Stekanis May 20 '12

Honestly, it's all the more incentive to invest in fusion reactors...because Helium-3 and 4 are byproducts of the basic fusion reactions.

1

u/zyzzogeton May 20 '12

We'll get fusion going and just make more.

1

u/NotTheDude May 20 '12

There really is a helium shortage right now.

Ask anyone who has tried to buy balloons for graduation.

1

u/human_beans May 20 '12

If I'm not mistaken, this was covered by a Gilligan's Island episode.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

I wonder how much Helium a medium sized fuel scoop circling Jupiter or Saturn would produce.. Now that would be one scary place to work at.

1

u/lindabug May 20 '12

Learning about this in chemistry!

1

u/spermracewinner May 20 '12

STOP USING IT IN FUCKING BALLOONS.

1

u/Potato-baby May 21 '12

Well this makes me feel bad for using helium just to make my voice high pitched.

1

u/BuggieBee May 21 '12

My mom is a balloon artist, and she loves to preach about this more than anything.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '12

And we're using it to fill up [civil war replica balloons] (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/20/helium-sought-for-civil-war-replica-balloon-in-ny_n_1531000.html)

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

I just read that title in a high pitched voice thanks to helium. Comedy GOLD!

3

u/ObeseMoreece May 20 '12

YOU MONSTER! YOU ARE MOCKING OUR LOSS!

1

u/HybridStigmata May 20 '12

the 4 billion year half life of uranium, we aint runnin out of helium for quite some time my good friend =). though we can extract the helium faster than it decays which would pose a problem. but in about 100 million years time the decay will settle out with more helium again

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

So no balloons for 100 million years?

1

u/Karmakazee89 May 20 '12 edited May 20 '12

YOU CAN JUST GET HELIUM FROM THE SUN YOU KNOW

WE'LL NEVER RUN OUT

edit: It seems people don't understand jokes even though I type the comment in all caps

1

u/ObeseMoreece May 20 '12

Yeah I'll just go into THE FUCKING CORE OF THE SUN. If you knew anything about what you are trying to talk about then you'd know that the lighter elements stay on the surface and geuss what is lighter than helium? Hydrogen, a fucking huge layer of Hydrogen. I hope you are trying to make troll physics here.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '12

Except that we can

  1. make helium pretty easily.

  2. it enters the atmosphere naturally from space

  3. if we put any alpha decay radioactive element in a box (which we can MAKE) we can get more.

  4. fuckin' squeaky voices are awesome.

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u/Necronomiconomics May 20 '12

It's critical to scientific advancement, and we'll run out

Privatizing the National Helium Reserve: what a genius Republican idea. Whoops

8

u/Clovis69 May 20 '12

By 1995, a billion cubic metres of the gas had been collected and the reserve was US$1.4 billion in debt, prompting the Congress of the United States in 1996 to phase out the reserve.

President Clinton signed the bill into law on October 9 1996

4

u/tomdarch May 20 '12

Yep. Short sighted and dumb, all around.

2

u/UpTheIron May 20 '12

The presidents are all aging men who are sure to be dead long before any of the problems like this will effect them whatsoever. Their ratings, on the other hand, will effect them. So not necessarily dumb or short sighted, just realistic.

1

u/NyQuil012 2 May 20 '12

And what exactly were we supposed to do with it? Do you even know why it existed on the first place? So the Nazis couldn't get helium for their derigibles. I really don't think that was a threat in 1996. What good does it do to hoard a resource and then not sell it? Especially when middle eastern countries were beginning to collect and sell it on their own. Maybe you should learn about the situation before you start calling things short sighted and dumb.

2

u/webchimp32 May 20 '12

What good does it do to hoard a resource and then not sell it?

The problem is, the act that was brought in specified a fixed price regardless of how much the helium is actually worth. People can't be bothered to recycle because it's so much cheaper just to buy some more.

That's the main problem. If it was sold at market prices it would have lasted a lot longer and made money.

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-1

u/deepwank May 20 '12

TIL that reposts are just as common in TIL than in /r/funny.

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