Posted on 06/28/2016 2:40:26 PM PDT by sparklite2
What scientists are calling a "game changer" for society has been discovered deep in Tanzania's Rift Valley: a massive helium gas field with enough of the precious commodity to fill more than 1.2 million MRI scanners, Phys.org reports.
Besides the sheer amount of gas, the discovery is notable because it appears to be the first time that stores of helium have been purposely found (they're usually stumbled upon during oil and gas drilling). And the find, which will be presented Tuesday by Durham University PhD student Diveena Danabalan at a Japanese geochemistry conference, could help restock nearly depleted stockpiles. Researchers figure there's about 54 billion cubic feet of helium in just one section of the valley. To put that in context, the Federal Helium Reserve in Texas, which supplies more than 40% of domestic helium needs and contains about 30% of the world's total helium supply, right now holds about 24.2 billion cubic feet, per Live Science.
(Excerpt) Read more at newser.com ...
Due to your photo, I am booking passage to Amarillo stat.
on a tramp steamer.
Its used in commercial diving. He02 surface gas diving or Saturation Diving. We used to go through thousands of dollars a day of gas on open circuit. Now most Saturation Diving systems us a gas reclaim system where the exhaled gas is scrubbed of CO2 replinished with 02 and sent back to the diver.
You dudes are wound waaay too tight.
I make a light hearted comment linking helium and munchkins and the “wrapped too tight” crowd takes it seriously. Obviously, you cannot grasp levity.
Lighten up, Francois!
LOL
That’s “lighten up, frans-WAHHH”.
I figured that....
Please leave it there it’s keeping the Earth floating in space ,we’ll fall out of the solar system then the Galaxy
One can never have too much helium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS3H2I-8hkQ
Helium is used as a shielding gas to allow metals to be welded without oxidation in the joint. A large fabricator, such as a shipyard, uses LOTS of helium. There are other gases that work, but they are more expensive and don't work as well. This is good news for fabricators.
its been a while since i read those install manuals but i want to say about 5 decanters of liquid helium at about 10 gallons each. i could be off been too long
I don’t think posters appreciate the gravity of the situation.
My understanding of helium (limited though it is) is that most terrestrial helium is formed in the lithosphere by radioactive decay of heavy elements. Like natural gas, it is lighter than everything else around it, and it migrates upward through pores and fissures in the rock, becoming trapped by the same mechanisms that trap natural gas. Helium is created by a different mechanism than that which creates natural gas, but it behaves pretty much the same from a fluid mechanics standpoint. It tends to migrate upward toward the earth’s surface, until, like natural gas, it encounters an impermeable layer, becomes trapped and accumulates. Sometimes helium and natgas flow into the same trap, which is why you often (but not always) find them in tandem.
Don’t tell Hank! He will introduce a bill to pay for anchoring Tanzania so it doesn’t tilt the planet! He single-handedly save Guam from tipping over in the Pacific Ocean don’tchaknow.
Helium is typically produced as a radioactive decay product of uranium or thorium, and is typically preserved underground in natural gas. The gas is first cooled to concentrate it, then it is cleaned by removing gaseous contaminants: methane, nitrogen, hydrogen, neon and argon.
Importantly, Tanzania is on the opposite side of a narrower part of Africa, from Gabon, which is known for its “natural nuclear reactor”. But many nations in Africa have substantial uranium deposits.
We're blamed for every other bad thing that happens in the world, so why not that?
Of course helium at that time was unbelievably scarce and was also considered essential to our own military needs since dirigibles were being adapted for war use. It was also unbelievably expensive.
The Germans could have easily asked for a waiver of the helium act and it would probably have been granted, but they didn't. People who've studied the matter say the cost for enough helium to lift the enormous Hindenburg was far more than the Germans -- still in a major economic depression -- could afford. They themselves opted for hydrogen.
The ultimate source of "abiotic oil" is postulated to be the primordial methane from the original gaseous constituents slowly percolating from the earth's deep interior to the surface. Helium is either primordial or results from various very long half-life primordial radioactives decaying (alpha particle decay). But both are gaseous, and get to the surface through the same "channels of porosity" until they hit some barrier (like a salt dome, or basalt layer), and are "trapped".
Methinks you don’t have a clue as to what a big deal this is for science.
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