4 ms·
One day our children will look back upon our wasteful, medieval ways with horror
by dharma1 11y ago
One day our children will look back upon our wasteful, medieval ways with horror
- jrockway 11y agoYou do know that helium is the second most abundant element in the Universe, right? We are not going to run out of helium. Someone will stand to make some money in going out there and getting it, perhaps, but there is plenty.
- LeifCarrotson 11y agoIt is abundant, so we're not going to "run out", but it may reach a point where it's impractical to recover. As the second most abundant element, a lot of it is found diffuse in the interstellar medium and in stars. It's not useful to us there. Right now, it's easily and cheaply available by extracting it from certain deposits of natural gas. We should price it based on long-term need and long-term availability, which doesn't include the helium found in distant stars.
- dharma1 11y agoYeah if you live in the Sun it is
- cdumler 11y agoIn the universe, certainly. Look at this [1] and you'll find that helium is an exceedingly small percentage of the Earth. Helium has an amazing ability escape containers over time due to it's almost completely non-reactive state. Once airborne, it readily escapes to space. We get it primarily because of the decay of radioactives [2] that get caught in pockets. It's not a renewable resource. Worse, it's not a recyclable/reclaimable once lost. It's a big deal and we should be conserving it heavily. 1 - http://periodictable.com/Properties/A/CrustAbundance.an.html http://periodictable.com/Properties/A/CrustAbundance.an.html 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium