Going, going, gone (reflection on reading)

In this article the author(s) were talking about how rare the element helium is on our planet Earth. It talked about all the different organisations, and showed some facts about helium. it also talks about how helium is one on the most important substances on Earth that might become more rare than gold.

The element helium, though rare on Earth, is the second most common element in the universe after hydrogen. Helium, in space, over time creates stars, and sometimes even planets. Because of this, all planets and stars are full of helium, especially gas giants. Earth once had a great supply of helium that got boiled away by the suns rays. Over time the helium regenerated on Earth but is now once again being depleted, but this time by humans. One of the problems is that when helium is used, it is hard to contain, and usually escapes into the atmosphere.

Helium is an element used world wide. It is used by rocket scientist, engineers, and even ordinary people using them for a profit. they are used for liquid-fueled experimental rockets, semiconductors and optical fibers cannot be easily manufactured, and cryogenically cooled particle accelerators and medical MRI machines cannot function. Helium may also once be used as a fuel in future nuclear reactors. Ordinary people around the world are selling helium balloons for profits at a huge rate. Because of all these reasons, helium is depleting faster than it is regenerating. Scientists estimate that Earth will only have a supply of helium for only 40 more years.

There are few things that we can do to solve this depleting problem. and the solutions we have, will only help on a long term scale, but they will help. The main thing we can do is minimize the amount of helium balloons. Also, we could try, to send space probes, to gas planets, and try to collect some of the helium from there.

This problem does not only have to apply to helium. After helium is gone, people will find an alternative element, and the process will just repeat with different elements. for example, gold, which is very rare, and is soon going to be replaced by silver and diamonds.