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Privatizing the US national helium reserve. Gonna laugh when in a few years the government of another nation ends up owning it. Helium is dwindling finite resource that key technological infrastructure relies upon.

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[-] Grownbravy@hexbear.net 24 points 10 months ago

Havent they been in the middle of doing this for like 20 years?

[-] YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

They finished the sell-down years ago to a much reduced capacity but now they're outright selling off the entire remaining stockpile and all the infrastructure

[-] RonPaulyShore@hexbear.net 22 points 10 months ago

actors in munchkin roles reeling.

[-] FALGSConaut@hexbear.net 16 points 10 months ago

The lollipop guild is in shambles

[-] stigsbandit34z@hexbear.net 22 points 10 months ago

Is there like a SpongeBob meme where the magic conch is capital and he’s is pulling it for an answer or something

This is the equivalent of our very logical and rational economic system btw

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[-] Melina@hexbear.net 21 points 10 months ago

It’s over for balloons

[-] stigsbandit34z@hexbear.net 21 points 10 months ago

Serious question: is there a replacement for helium or is it sorta a when it’s gone it’s gone kinda deal

[-] HumanBehaviorByBjork@hexbear.net 16 points 10 months ago

pretty sure it just goes up to the top of the atmosphere and stays there.

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[-] axont@hexbear.net 13 points 10 months ago

Helium is too light to stay within Earth's gravity. Nearly all helium came from underground. The problem with helium is that it's too good. It's inert, light, and doesn't conduct anything. It's really good for some specific applications, like MRIs use it.

The helium that's on Earth now is the only amount we have. The sun is full of it though, like it spits out helium by the ton every second. There's an amount of helium-3 on the moon too, underneath the top layer, and I've heard some space scientists speculate that we might eventually have to harvest helium from the moon.

It's possible to break down some radioactive elements into helium, but that takes hundreds of millions of years. It's possible to make helium-3 using nuclear fusion with tritium and lithium then capturing the decay products, but this is extremely slow, expensive, and I think less than something like 200kg of helium have ever been made this way. It's hypothetically possible to bombard deuterium atoms together to create helium. Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope that has a neutron in its nucleus. If you've ever heard of "cold fusion" that's a big part of what those people want to accomplish, reliable and efficient ways of creating helium atoms.

The cosmically ironic part about Earth running out of helium is that the universe makes helium in such large quantities that it's the second most common element. There are huge clouds of helium floating around space that are larger than our whole galaxy. Our sun builds enough helium to last us for hundreds of years and it does that in several seconds.

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[-] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 20 points 10 months ago

Clown world should have been our meme.

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[-] HumanBehaviorByBjork@hexbear.net 15 points 10 months ago

prepare for Balloonpocalypse

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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
190 points (100.0% liked)

chapotraphouse

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