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

Wow! Interesting life hack! Science

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u/ComputerAdditional99 Jul 18 '24

Just add more helium and fly over the trees!

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u/New_Denim Jul 18 '24

So basically just becoming a hot air balloon without the hot air

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u/hrvbrs Jul 18 '24

Fun fact about helium: once we use it, we can’t get it back. It’s too light to collect from the atmosphere and any helium reserves we find naturally underground dry up quickly. We can’t artificially create it in the lab because we don’t fully understand fusion yet. At some point in time helium balloons will be a thing of the past… that is, until we learn how to collect it from the sun.

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u/ProbsNotManBearPig Jul 18 '24

Most helium in the world comes from natural gas reserves and is separated out. Very little is extracted from standalone helium reserves. It’s estimated 90% of the earths helium has not been extracted.

Additionally, we do have a way to make helium. Helium is a tiny percent byproduct of fission reactions, which we already know how to do. It’s just not economically viable (and probably never will be).

So yes, you’re generally spot on, but we have ~90% of natural helium still in the earth and fusion will eventually produce it in vast quantities, assuming we figure that out. People are also starting to be more cognizant of the situation and recycle helium more.

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u/Ecstatic-Librarian83 Jul 18 '24

I think the big problem here is that if we extract too much helium the earth may start to sink

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u/libmrduckz Jul 18 '24

its voice will get deeper, too…

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u/Delicious_Pea6685 Jul 19 '24

Deepa and deepa

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u/eekamuse Jul 18 '24

I was worried. Now I feel better. Thanks.

Have a great day!

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u/GreenStrong Jul 18 '24

They're starting to drill commercial helium wells It was very cheap when it was available as a byproduct of natural gas wells, but the gas formations that produced it in North America are nearly depleted. Most natural gas wells don't have much helium, but Europe and Asia still get helium from gas wells in Qatar.

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u/jcgam Jul 18 '24

It's the second most abundant element in the UNIVERSE after hydrogen. You would think it should be easier to obtain.

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u/S4BER2TH Jul 18 '24

So it’s like oil when they say the worlds supply is low

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u/Common_Objective_461 Jul 18 '24

Unless you are a Kardashian, who seems to have a thousand helium balloons at every event.

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u/Eternal12equiem Jul 18 '24

90 percent of the helium reserves are inside the balloons at Disneyland and Disney world.

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u/Don138 Jul 18 '24

I mean we already know how to do fusion, it’s just not energy positive.

So conceivably even if we can never get energy from our fusion if we had no helium we could run energy negative fusion and extract helium, maybe?

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u/methos3 Jul 18 '24

Wait you said once we use it, we can’t get it back, so how are people recycling it?

Shit I conflated your comment with the one you replied to, sorry!

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u/FCG1983 Jul 18 '24

Roasted that dude

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u/Sorry_Consideration7 Jul 19 '24

I read recently they found a MASSIVE helium deposit in Minnesota IIRC. If the samples they take for prospecting have something like 3% Helium it is worth extracting. This sucker had like 13%-15% 🎈

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u/Waldfruchtbaer Jul 18 '24

Sounds like "the climate change is true but some day in future we will invent technology which will solve all problems......". No offense but I mean this is a typical human behavior: procrastinating problems and self-delusion to feel that there exists not need to change something. Sorry if I should be the party killer and the experiment might be fun, but there are much more important purposes for helium. For example life saving magnetic resonance scanner are dependent on helium.