So if you would release helium above km, it would rise above other gases, even without a balloon, which is why helium and hydrogen tend to be found further out in the hetereosphere. Since Helium is so light it can actually escape into outer space. See here. Most of the helium we use comes from radioactive particles decaying underground. Yes, we can run out, and yes, it will make everything awful. Given the value of helium, we should be making every effort to conserve it.
When we run out of fossil hydrocarbon fuels we can find alternative sources of energy, but when helium is gone, it's gone. It would probably hang around just around the atmosphere, because even though being lighter than air, it still has mass. Also, helium is created on earth from radioactive decay in elements like uranium, because a helium nucleus is a deadly alpha particle.
As long as we can make alpha particles, we can make helium. Helium is also created in stars during nuclear fusion. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Can helium disappear from Earth?
Ask Question. Asked 8 years, 1 month ago. Active 3 years, 11 months ago. Viewed 21k times. Improve this question. DanielSank Gil Gil 4 4 gold badges 8 8 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges. The only reasonably cheap and large-scale source of the stuff comes as an intentionally captured byproduct in certain natural gas extraction sites. The US, for instance, has at least one enormous helium-rich natural gas supply that has been carefully mined for many years to get the helium. But other countries have no such resources and so helium will appear much more precious there.
Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Emilio Pisanty Emilio Pisanty k 28 28 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. Alexander Torstling Alexander Torstling 4 4 bronze badges. Hovercouch Hovercouch 1, 2 2 gold badges 8 8 silver badges 11 11 bronze badges. This is quite a dramatic verdict: not just some things, but everything It is made on earth via nuclear decay of uranium, and it is recovered from mines.
Once it is released into the atmosphere it becomes uneconomical to recapture it, and eventually atmospheric helium will escape earth altogether because it is so light. This is an issue that many people outside the industries that use helium are unaware of, but one that will eventually affect them nonetheless. The first linked article nicely summarizes why this has become a pressing concern in recent years.
In response to the element's scarcity, the United States has been stockpiling helium since the s in a National Helium Reserve called the Bush Dome, a deep underground reservoir outside of Amarillo, Texas. By the mid s 1. The current reserve is approximately 0. Source: Probing Question: Are we running out of helium? A few months after this article appeared, congress passed a bill to maintain the reserves.
There is focus on the negative impact that bad policy has on scientific users of helium, but I want to emphasize that there are many other uses of helium in industry and medicine , and a few are listed below :. We cannot produce more helium once it is all extracted from the earth. All methods to produce more helium are so ridiculously costly that they are not worth discussing: 1 hydrogen fusion 2 bombarding other atoms such as lithium or boron with energetic protons in a particle accelerator 3 mining it on the moon is a ridiculous proposition in terms of the volumes that are needed to be transported back to earth mining Helium-3 on the moon is probably economically viable however.
In that sense, the problem of running out of helium is different from the problem of running out of petroleum. For the latter, people can and do synthesize alternatives such as ethanol fuel, not to mention the myriad non-carbon-emitting energy options out there.
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