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Nobel prizewinner: We are running out of helium
- sliverstorm 16y agoI won't be sad to see party balloons go. Even if it's only a small amount of our total helium, it always felt like a huge waste of helium, even when I was a little kid.
- mikeklaas 16y agoHow did you know that helium was a so much more valuable than the balloons themselves as a kid?
- sliverstorm 16y agoI knew that helium was lighter than air, and suspected it escaped our atmosphere, so I figured we wouldn't be able to get it back. The balloon on the other hand, while not recyclable, didn't leave the planet.
- ars 16y agoThe balloon is latex and self-recycles. The string though - that's bad.
- sliverstorm 16y agoWell, I was a kid, and didn't know that latex was bio-degradable
- jacquesm 16y agoThat's quite an amazing train of thought for a young kid, especially the 'escaped our atmosphere' bit.
- regularfry 16y agoI think it's very easy to forget exactly how active, and imaginative, a child's mind is.
- kragen 16y agoI thought every science-minded kid had this same thought.
- jacquesm 16y agoThe escaped our atmosphere bit is actually pretty advanced physics. Most kids would assume that the helium would form a spherical shell if they knew about gravity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape
- kragen 16y agoWell, people can happen on the right prediction for the wrong reasons. I'm sure I didn't know about thermal atmospheric escape when I thought this, or probably even that a gas at a temperature consisted of molecules with a random distribution of kinetic energies centered on that temperature. I think I just thought that there would always be stuff denser than helium that would push it further and further away from the earth, without limit. (This is almost true, but most of the solar system is filled with hydrogen, which is less dense than helium.)
- stretchwithme 16y agoI agree 100%. Keep enough to cover the military's needs for 50 year and sell off the rest.
- phaedrus 16y agoI'm not sure what you're agreeing with considering the article is arguing the US govt should NOT be selling off helium.
- TheEzEzz 16y agoI think stretchwithme meant sell it off wholesale to private distributors, rather than selling off directly to consumers.
- gwern 16y agoLike it matters? Helium is helium, it's fungible, the private distributors have every incentive (like the consumers) to use or waste helium. An annual discount rate of 5% or more means that value 20 or 50 years from now is very small indeed.
- stretchwithme 16y agoNo, that's not the case. If you own something, selling it immediately for whatever cash you can get is what you want to do. You want to sell it for as much as you can and that means not dumping it in to the market all at once. This is especially true when getting more is very difficult. The price is likely to go up in the future, making even more sense to hold on to it. And not sure what fungibility has to do with it. Doesn't that just mean its easy to quantify and trade? A pound of helium is a pound of helium no matter where you buy? Why would that give you an incentive to dump what you own for whatever you can get now? Many people like buying assets that hold their value and like holding them instead of pieces of paper the government can and will soon have to inflate away.
- 16y ago
- Natsu 16y agoI can't help but feel like there should be an investment opportunity here...
- ww520 16y agoQuick, set up a startup to colonize the Moon for helium. Wait, does helium-3 count?
- phreeza 16y agoI wonder if this Richardson made an investment before issuing this statement ;)
- Natsu 16y agoI assume that whoever voted this down didn't like the idea of someone profiting from this. My thoughts were different: if a private reserve was made, there would be a supply for important uses like liquid helium superconductors, rather than party balloons. Ostensibly, that's what the US reserve was for, but I guess we're selling it off for $1.50/m^3.
- Rod 16y agoAs expected from a New Scientist article, this is not very informative. If you wanna learn more, you might wanna take a look at these: http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/31/i06/html/06chem.html http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/31/i06/html/06chem.... http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.08/helium.html http://books.google.com/books?id=A-lS1ZD8yOkC http://books.google.com/books?id=A-lS1ZD8yOkC
- mattmanser 16y agoIt's an article, not a thesis, what do you expect?
- Rod 16y agoI expect content. Do note that the acs.org link is an article too, not a thesis, so you have no point.
- csmeder 16y agoSo should we start hoarding helium so that we can sell it at a premium in like 50 years?
- c1sc0 16y agoWe're running out of all kinds of natural resources. The main problem I see is that natural resources are way underpriced in current markets since markets only assign value based in the short term. We need a pricing mechanism that spans generations and encourages conservation for the centuries to come. A free market for helium is a start, but is still heavily biased towards short-term profits. Or am I wrong here?
- AngryParsley 16y agoIf you suspect certain resources will be more expensive in the future, you can buy futures and make a killing. You can also look at the going rates for futures contracts and compare them to the current price of the commodity to get an idea of future scarcity.
- c1sc0 16y agosure, but who's going to cash in on those contracts if my horizon is 500 years?
- AngryParsley 16y agoI think any action taken today is unlikely to preserve resources 500 years from now. You'd have to start some sort of monastery devoted to hoarding helium. (This is harder than it sounds. Helium diffuses through metal tanks.) More importantly, I don't think future generations will benefit much from our conservation efforts. Resource needs and constraints change over time. As technology advances, we find new ways to create substitutes for rare materials, or find ways to use rare materials more efficiently. Someone in 1500 would be unlikely to correctly guess scarce resources 500 years in the future.
- c1sc0 16y agoYet in most of the middle ages it was common practise to plant oak when a new building in e.g. a monastery was completed, in order to enable the next generation to replace e.g. the roof structure.
- sabj 16y agoThis is a big deal! It's not something that is reflected well on the market, IMO. Important resource that isn't priced effectively, doesn't consider the future... definitely not the only thing that fits that bill, but this one is a little more cut and dry. However, it's a bit hard to bet on the price of helium. Most of the main producers are reasonably diversified among other gas-products etc.
- tofutim 16y agoTime to hoard helium.
- scotty79 16y agoI wonder why you got downvoted. That's probably what people who influenced decision about selling US helium reserves are doing right now.
- Tichy 16y agoOr research alternative party balloon technologies.
- pjscott 16y agoHydrogen! Even more buoyant than helium, and if you get it near a flame, the balloon turns into a fireball. Just one of those would make a party more fun. (Do not let oxygen into the mix, though, or you'll get a lot more than just a fireball if the thing ignites.)
- kragen 16y agoA hydrogen-oxygen mixture in a flexible container like a balloon is unlikely to amplify a deflagration into a detonation. However, either way, the fireball radiates mostly in the ultraviolet. You might want to mix some methane or acetylene or something in there to help it radiate in the less-dangerous visible spectrum.
- gwern 16y ago> Maybe in Europe there has been a conversation, but not in the US - and the US supplies nearly 80 per cent of the helium used in the world. The problem is that these supplies will run out in a mere 25 years, and the US government has a policy of selling helium at a ridiculously low price. This sounds like a prediction! 'US helium production will crash to near-zero in 25 years.' http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1686 http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1686
- wanderr 16y agoSo, because a prediction about something once was wrong, all subsequent predictions about that thing must also be wrong?
- Ardit20 16y agoNo, its just that when you cry wolf so many times, no one believes you when the wolf actually turns up.
- epochwolf 16y agoyo :)
- jayro 16y agoNow that was funny. LOL
- Ardit20 16y agocommon, wolves can't type!
- jacoblyles 16y agoPlease down vote this to prevent future pun threads. Far too many one liners are getting points lately.
- jbooth 16y ago
- varjag 16y agoMy physics is rusty, but isn't helium a common byproduct in nuclear fission? EDIT: OK looked it up, it indeed is but totally uneconomical in practice.
- cpearce 16y agoBetter get cold fusion working, or find a way to mine asteroids profitably...
- WorkerBee 16y agoFusion works (in that it successfully fuses atoms) and has since the 1960s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor You don't get more energy out than you put in, but if your goal is to make helium, that's hardly the point - just about every other industrial process also consumes energy.
- Retric 16y agoThe problem is you need to be really close to breakeven or your going to be wasting GWh per lb of helium.
- scotty79 16y ago100$ per party baloon? That's pretty expensive. Maybe it would be good strategy to buy pressurized canisters with helium, stash them under your home and your kids or grandkids could sell it and become pretty wealthy.
- ams6110 16y agoThere are other lighter-than-air gasses that could be used, e.g. hydrogen. Problem is that I think all of the practical ones are either flammable or toxic, maybe both---a bad idea at a kid's birthday party.
- sp332 16y agoHelium is really hard to store for extended periods of time, it will eventually leak through microfissures in metal containers.
- csomar 16y agoRising the price or not selling is not a solution. Not only we are running out of helium, but also any other substance in the earth is concerned. The solution is a big factory that analyses the air, water, or any other mix of substances to extract the substance we like and classify them. It can also create a mix, like H2O.... Sounds like a terrible idea, but it's the revolution we need for the next 100 years, if we really want to continue development in the planet Earth. If you are not already aware, fauna and flora are already doing it for thousands of years. And yes, they did it successfully. The sun could be a valuable energetic resource.
- gwern 16y ago> The solution is a big factory that analyses the air, water, or any other mix of substances to extract the substance we like and classify them. So all we have to do is either invent perfect nanotechnology or Maxwell's demon? Brilliant!
- superk 16y agoReminds me of Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future II http://bttf.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion http://bttf.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion
- kragen 16y agoWe know. "Engines of Creation" was published in 1986. "The Diamond Age" popularized the idea in 1995. Catch up!
- losethos 16y agoWonderful -- another nightmare to worry about.
- rdtsc 16y agoI have a stupid question: If helium is so infeasable to extract from air or get from other chemical means. How did US end up with such had such a large supply of helium in the first place? EDIT: The answer to the question is: U.S. Bureau of Mines arranged for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. For this helium conservation program, the Bureau built a 425-mile (684 km) pipeline from Bushton, Kansas to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field. This helium-nitrogen mixture was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, when it then was further purified.
- Rod 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]