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We're just a few years away from running out of one of our most important and rarest natural resources
and it's not oil or coal or
rainforests or children or wheezy waiter videos. There will be plenty of wheezy waiter videos hopefully. We're talking about
Helium. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, but it's extremely rare here on Earth.
And it's not just for party balloons and making your voice sound funny. I can do without Helium.
Stop using helium. Helium is a crucial component to a whole range of medical devices and
Scientific instruments from MRIs to Rocket fuel to the large Hadron Collider, and it's important enough that the US has a national helium reserve.
But it could all be gone by 2020. Good Stuff producer
Matt weber tells the story of helium: how it's accidental discovery here on Earth made groundbreaking
scientific discovery possible and how it could all be going away soon
One night in 1903 the residents of Dexter
Kansas prepared to turn a geyser of natural gas that have been erupting out of the ground into a towering pillar of fire as big
and bright as their economic future. They had just stumbled upon a large reservoir of natural gas underneath their tiny agrarian
community. The imminent arrival of industry and investment seemed a virtual certainty so in celebration of their newfound prosperity
The residents of Dexter decided to set their discovery on fire. Natural gas is largely Methane
And Methane burns readily so setting it ablaze should have been easy
But when they tried to light the gas nothing happened. It stubbornly refused to burn. Whatever was shooting out of the ground under dexter
Kansas wasn't Methane. It was something rarely seen on Earth
Helium. Evidence for Helium's existence was first identified in
1868 by French Astronomer Jules Janssen while observing the sun during a solar eclipse
He found a bright yellow line in the spectrum of the sun's chromosphere that didn't quite align with any known element. That same year English
Scientist Norman lockyer saw the same yellow spectral line while taking advantage of London's thick smog to measure the sun's solar spectrum
He surmised that it was a new element found only on the sun
And he named it helium after the Greek word for sun, Helios
In the next couple of decades helium would be found emanating from certain rocks and even volcanic eruptions
but only in small amounts
As the reserves of this element seemed to be limited to the surface of the sun. A sample of the non flammable gas found outside
Dexter was sent to the chemist Hamilton Cady at the University of Kansas. There
He found the sample contained a significant amount of an unknown inert gas using a spectroscope
Katie saw--much to surprise--the same bright yellow spectral line that Janssen and lockyer saw
Decades earlier on the surface of the sun. Meaning the gas had to be helium--which suggested there was a massive store of helium below
the town of Dexter Kansas
the first of its kind ever found on Earth. As was observed a few decades before the discovery of the dexter helium pocket
certain kinds of rocks emit helium through radioactive decay
Most of this helium just floats away in to outer space because it is lighter than the surrounding air, but under the right circumstances
Helium can become trapped underground while the dexter helium pocket was an important scientific
Discovery there was no known practical use for the gas at the time
So the residents of Dexter would never see the fantastic riches that they had hoped for but just a decade later
Helium would become of strategic importance to the US military
World War 1 was in full swing and for the first time in military history the sky had become a theater of war
Blimps were a crucial military tool
carrying out reconnaissance missions and
Aerial bombing raids from the relative security of the Air and blimps needed helium. You could use hydrogen which is much more plentiful
But it wasn't as safe. It's highly combustible--as the hindenburg disaster would tragically demonstrate decades later. On the other hand helium is inert
It's a noble gas which means it doesn't react with any other elements and like the residents of Dexter, Kansas discovered
It doesn't burn. While helium is rare on Earth in a stroke of good luck for the us military
Large quantities of the gas just happen to exist underneath the great plains of North America
So the US began stockpiling helium in 1925 the National Helium reserve was established and the u.s.
Soon became the world's number one supplier of helium. In fact the US
Held a virtual Monopoly over the gas
but it's not just good for airships and blimps. During the space Race in the
1950s liquid helium became crucial to the production of Rocket fuel and by 1965 the us was using more helium than ever before today
It's most common use isn't in airships or party balloons
But to cool superconducting magnets in MRI scanners and other medical and scientific instruments including the largest
machine in the world: The Large Hadron Collider
First launched in 2008 the Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator
The most powerful of its kind it promised to answer some of the biggest questions. We have about the universe
What is it made of? How did it begin, and how did we get here?
But shortly after it was first activated a helium leak shut down the large Hadron collider for month. The gigantic
superconducting magnets that make the particle accelerator possible depended on supercooled liquid helium to function. Without
Helium the large Hadron Collider is useless and we are running out of it. Helium is non-renewable
It can't be synthesized through any practical method so all the helium that escapes into outer space is
Helium that can never be recovered. The national helium reserve is expected to be exhausted by 2020
But that's by design. The helium privatization act of 1996
Mandated that the reserve be sold off so in the intervening decades the us has been flooding the market with cheap helium
This has discouraged active exploration
for new helium
Deposits because if you can get helium so readily from the reserve there's no reason to go out and drill for it
But in the last few years as the reserve is depleted the price of helium has been rising this has caused many
Scientists to depend on the gas for their research to begin recapturing and recycling the gas or Abandon their work entirely
But all is not lost. There could be more helium deposits. We just haven't been looking hard enough
Just last year a team of British
Researchers ventured deep into the Tanzanian Rift Valley to investigate a hunch
Ever since the accidental discovery of helium outside Dexter Kansas all the helium
We've ever found has been by accident, or just a byproduct of natural gas exploration
But you should be able to find helium deposits on purpose by searching for the right conditions in the Earth's crust
And that's exactly what these researchers did in the east African rift
Seismic Forces have been pulling the Earth's crust apart for millions of years the intense heat generated by this tectonic activity
fosters the release of helium in the ancient Molten rock
if their estimates are correct it could contain twice the amount of helium stored in the national helium reserve and keep our MRIs
And particle accelerators supplied for years to come, but the exact amount of helium is hidden within the Earth
And we won't know exactly how much we have left until we start drilling and the long-term environmental impact of large-scale
helium mining are poorly understood
But rising helium prices will only make the active exploration and exploitation of new helium deposits increasingly lucrative venture for better or worse
helium has been here since the very
Beginning of our universe it was forged in the first few minutes of the big bang in the same energy soup that gave birth to
Everything we see today. As a consequence
It's bright yellow
Spectral line can be seen all across the cosmos yet here on Earth
Helium is rare and valuable and will remain so for the foreseeable future
but unlike other
Non-Renewable resources much of its worth comes from scientific importance not only do its unique properties allow us to venture into space
They also let us peer inside of our bodies and into the very building blocks of the universe
That knowledge the discovery that helium makes possible is what makes it so invaluable
So what do you think? Will new helium discoveries be enough to keep the large Hadron Collider running?
Will, we have to find an alternative? Will we have to ban kids birthday parties and never talk funny again
Let us know in the comments and don't forget to like and subscribe and share this video so that others may
accidentally discover it! Special thank you to our patreon subscribers for making this episode of the good stuff possible without
Patreon the good stuff just wouldn't exist
So if you want to make our future as bright as a flaming pillar of methane--my band name in high school--head on over
To our patreon page and support the show thanks for watching
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