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The World is Losing An Entire Element


David

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Helium, or HE, is actually lost to the atmosphere whenever you use it. Yes, that means whenever you have balloons at a party you're squandering one of the most precious non-renewable resources on the planet; an entire element that has completely unique properties. It might be gone in 25-30 years at the current rate, meaning only one generation of humans could ruin it for the entire planet for all time because they lol when things float away. Think about all of the possible future technology you're eliminating by taking an entire element out of the equation. Shame on you, random citizens.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html

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Wait, how did we get it in the first place? I know it isn't a man made element, so did we somehow pull it out of the air?

It's a by-product of a natural process. Considering the Earth is like 4.6 billion years old and there's only enough to have lasted us like 100 years, it's created very slowly.

There is no way of manufacturing it artificially, and practically all of the world's reserves have been derived as a by-product from the extraction of natural gas, mostly in the giant oil- and gasfields of the American South-west, which historically have had the highest helium concentrations.

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It's a by-product of a natural process. Considering the Earth is like 4.6 billion years old and there's only enough to have lasted us like 100 years, it's created very slowly.

Gosh, that's even worse than oil, and we have alternatives to oil!

What the heck are we doing wasting all this helium on balloons and making our voice sound funny?

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