Abstract
Helium. The mere mention of the word calls forth a variety of images in our brain—colorful balloons ascending the sky to mark the beginning of events such as the Olympics, advertising blimps floating above our urban landscapes, or a child’s parents planning a birthday party, going to a party store for balloons filled with helium.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Remarks made by Clifford W. Siebel, who had come to study chemistry at the University of Kansas, and he was advised to investigate the new gas.
- 2.
There is a large reserve of natural gas in Russia and the Middle East, and, most probably, also of helium. However this possibility has not yet been commercially pursued, although both Russia and the Middle East can become the largest supplier of helium in the near future. (“Nobel prize winner warns world: We’re running out of helium,” Discover, August 25, 2010.)
- 3.
This is a painstakingly slow process. When a uranium-238 atom decays, it produces eight helium atoms, and only about half of Earth’s uranium has decayed since its formation.
- 4.
This reserve may soon run out. Although the U. S. government has been stockpiling helium gas in a plant in Amarillo, Texas, since 1925, Congress passed the Helium Privatization Act in 1996 to allow selling the reserve at very low prices in order to get rid of the stockpile by 2015. Its current price of $5 per liter has been called too low to reflect the actual state of demand and supply by many experts (see the report “Why the world is running out of helium,” The Independent, August 23, 2010). With a worldwide consumption rate of about 170 million cubic meters a year, the current reserves would barely last forty years or so, and that too with optimistic assumptions (see: “US sale of helium criticized,” New Scientist, January 22, 2010). Finding new sources of helium has been cited as a motivation to send missions in the future to the Moon, in order to mine helium (and its isotope helium-3). It is believed that the solar wind, which consists of energetic particles emanating from the Sun, deposits helium-3 on the lunar soil.
- 5.
One way to understand its inert nature is to notice the high binding energy of its electrons. The amount of energy needed to pry off an electron from a helium atom is four times that in the case of hydrogen. This is a measure of how tightly bound the electrons are to the helium atom, and also of its inability to combine with other elements.
- 6.
“Helium was discovered in the gaseous atmosphere surrounding the Sun by the French astronomer Pierre Janssen, who detected a bright yellow line in the spectrum of the solar chromosphere during an eclipse in 1868.” (Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc, Vol. 5, 2003, 813.)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nath, B.B. (2013). The Unbearable Lightness of a ‘Noble’ Element. In: The Story of Helium and the Birth of Astrophysics. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5363-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5363-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5362-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5363-5
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)