Touch the sky. You mean everything to me.
…sooner or later, helium will become more precious than gold. Though best known as the lifting gas in balloons (and the high squeaky voices it evokes when inhaled), helium’s buoyancy, inertness, and other unique properties make it irreplaceable for some of our civilization’s highest technologies. Without large amounts of helium, liquid-fueled rockets cannot be safely tested and launched, semiconductors and optical fibers cannot be easily manufactured, and cryogenically cooled particle accelerators and medical MRI machines cannot function. Helium may also prove crucial as a working fluid or even a fuel in future nuclear reactors. And unlike gold, which can be eternally recovered and shaped to new functions, only very expensive countermeasures can prevent helium, once used, from escaping into the atmosphere and drifting away into outer space.
Helium’s rarity on Earth and relative abundance in America are cosmic and planetary accidents. After hydrogen, helium is the second most common element in the universe, with the bulk of it formed during the big bang.
photo { Stephen Shore }
