The World Is Wasting Our Irreplaceable Helium

When liquid helium plant was discovered on Earth, its unique properties immediately lent itself to scientific uses. As a lighter-than-air gas, it could be used for buoyancy or even levitation. Since it's both non-reactive and inert, it can be used at high temperatures and in oxygen-rich environments without a risk of explosion. The speed of sound is almost three times greater in helium than in air, leading to acoustic applications.

And at atmospheric pressure but at low temperatures, it liquefies but never solidifies, making it the ultimate coolant for particle accelerators, MRI machines, and superconductors. Yet helium is extremely limited in abundance on Earth's surface, and we're making no effort to conserve it. We waste it on balloons and birthday parties, and the National Helium Reserve has been ordered to sell itself off. If we don't do anything differently, we run the danger of exhausting the world's supply.

Helium is lighter than all the other gases in Earth's atmosphere, and over time it rises to the very top of the exosphere: the border between Earth's most tenuous atoms and the vacuum of space itself. At these great heights, a strong kick from either sunlight or a solar wind particle is enough to propel a helium purification system atom past its escape velocity, and off of Earth forever.