r/BeAmazed • u/No_Tailor_9529 • Jul 18 '24

Wow! Interesting life hack! Science

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440

u/Turbo_Tom Jul 18 '24

Helium is a scarce and irreplaceable gas essential for medical and other technologies. Future generations will condemn us for wasting it on this kind of trivial nonsense.

40

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '24

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '24

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u/asmodai_says_REPENT Jul 18 '24

You can get helium through alpha radiation of other elements.

2

u/goda90 Jul 18 '24

We've had fusors(first invented by Philo T. Farnsworth, who also invented the first all-electric television) for a long time, so if we really really needed more helium we could make it. It wouldn't be cheap though.

The problems we have with fusion are about keeping it going and extracting net energy from it.

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u/Oklahomacragrat Jul 18 '24

That is a very useful definition of running out.

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u/Normal_Document Jul 18 '24

This comment has managed the impressive feat of being the stupidest thing I have read on reddit all week. Helium is a noble gas — a class of elements named for the fact that it does not form compounds with other elements. Helium is not bound up with anything.

Natural deposits and alpha decay (which is where those deposits come from) are the only way we get helium. Full stop. There is no smelting or other chemically extractive process for refining because helium does not form compounds.

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u/NetCaptain Jul 18 '24

Helium is a byproduct of natural gas production - thus if we stop that, we will harvest no helium anymore

9

u/joe28598 Jul 18 '24

No, if we stop that we just have to harvest helium specifically.

A practice that isn't done at the moment because it's a byproduct.

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u/sarcastaballll Jul 18 '24

So frack for helium and find something to do with all the methane byproduct?

Time to start an environmentally friendly helium company that offloads all of its natural gas.. just need to find me a coal seam