The Surprising and Forgotten History of Helium

in 1886 English scientist Norman Lockyer was using a relatively new device that was called a spectroscope which studies properties of matter based on visible light that is dispersed along a spectrum according to its wavelength by a prism looking in a spectrum that was observed towards the edge of the Sun or along its corona he noticed in the spectrum a bright spot that indicated the presence of an element that had a wavelength that was similar to sodium suspecting that he identified a brand new heretofore undiscovered solar element he named it after the Greek name for the Sun Helios and thus for the first time in human history identified what humans had never before seen the second most abundant element in the known universe helium and that noble gas would change history it is history that deserves to be remembered helium is the second lightest and second most abundant element in the observable universe only behind hydrogen making up approximately 23% of the universe's baryonic mass that is the mass made up by normal matter as opposed to dark matter the gas has applications both because it is naturally inert and nonreactive and because it can be cooled to a very cold state without freezing in fact it won't freeze to a solid under normal pressure instead becoming superfluid making it both industrially important for cryogenics and a valuable tool in studying quantum mechanics scientists theorized that most of the universe's helium was created by the so called Big Bang but is also created inside stars where by a complex process called the proton to proton chain hydrogen atoms are fused into helium four as helium four has lower mass than the four hydrogen atoms that created it energy is released by Einsteins formula e equals MC squared as there are a massive amount of hydrogen atoms being fused this process creates a massive amount of energy some of which escapes the star in short the process of fusion powers the Sun and then the earth while at the same time producing helium but the helium produced in the Sun is not what we use to fill party balloons here on earth in the atmosphere the concentration of helium by volume is just 5.2 parts per million too little for extraction to be practical that is because helium is able to escape Earth's atmosphere via a number of processes in essence bleeding into space unlike a gas giant like Jupiter where the great mass of the planet and the extreme cold temperatures allowed to hold on to much of its helium and hydrogen so where do we get helium to understand that we have to go back in scientific history Luigi PME area was an Italian physicist - in 1847 became chair of the physics department at the University of Naples he was doing work with the Vesuvius Observatory which had been founded in 1841 on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius to study the volcano that had famously destroyed the Roman city of Pompeii an eruption in 79 AD the observatory is the oldest Volcanology Institute in the world in the course of his work there he made improvements to a number of scientific instruments including the seismometer the Moore's Telegraph and the meteorological instruments the anemometer which measures wind and the Poovey ammeter which measures rain in 1881 pammi Airy was studying a process that occurs in extraordinary conditions like volcanoes called sublimation where a substance transitions directly from a solid to a gas without going through an intermediate liquid phase tommy Airy was using a spectroscope to determine exactly what substances were being subliminal and among his findings was a surprise that bright yellow spot of a wavelength 587 point 4 9 nanometers that only before it been observed in the corona of the Sun in studying volcanoes Palmyra had made an astounding discovery helium thought only to occur in the Sun occurred naturally on earth and could be trapped in minerals while probably Aires discovery was intriguing it did not explain what this mysterious element was nor how it was trapped or released that discovery also occurred by accident John Williams struck that the 3rd Baron Rayleigh was a British scientist who made a number of different important contributions to science including providing a theoretical understanding of the process of elastic scattering of light by particles that explains why the sky is blue during the day and Redden's at sunset that process is called Rayleigh scattering in 1894 Rayleigh gave a lecture that was attended by a Scottish chemist named William Ramsay in the lecture Rayleigh mentioned that he had noticed a discrepancy between the density of nitrogen made by chemical synthesis and nitrogen isolated from the air by removal of other known components Rayleigh theorized that the nitrogen extracted from air was mixed with another unknown gas the two decided to investigate the discrepancy and in August of that year ramsay isolated what he described as a new heavy component of air which curiously did not appear to have any chemical reactivity he named the inert gas argon from the Greek word meaning lazy what Ramsey and Rayleigh had discovered were in fact the noble gases a group of six chemical elements that have similar properties that includes neon argon Krypton xenon the radioactive radon and of course helium the six noble gases are all odorless colorless monatomic meaning the atoms are not bound to each other gasses with very low chemical reactivity the inertness of noble gases make them very suitable in applications where reactions are not wanted and they have a number of scientific and practical applications for their discovery Rayleigh was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physics and Ramsey was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1895 Ramsey was searching for argon by applying sulfuric acid to the mineral cleave it--and impure radioactive variety of uraninite which has a high concentration of rare earth elements when he applied the acid and used the spectroscope he saw the characteristic bright yellow line indicating helium the same year pair two-door cleave the Swedish meteorologist after whom CLE vite was named was able to independently isolate helium from a sample of cleave it-- and collect enough of the gas to determine its atomic weight in fact helium is found in large amounts in minerals including CLE vite ureña night carton Carnot height and monocyte minerals of uranium and thorium but exactly how and why these minerals contain helium was still a mystery until new zealand-born physicists Ernest Rutherford's studied the nature of radioactivity radioactivity had first been discovered by French scientists on Rebecca RAL shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of spontaneous radiation with Pierre and Marie Curie radioactive decay is a process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by emitting radiation such as an alpha particle discovery transform scientific understanding into the nature of matter and resulted in practical applications such as the use of radiation therapy to treat cancer among their contributions Security's discovered the radioactive element radium Ernest Rutherford largely known as the father of nuclear physics was the first to realize that all such elements decay in accordance with the same mathematical exponential formula the concept of a radioactive half-life he also identified the element radon a radioactive substance that is one of the noble gases and differentiated alpha and beta particles for his work he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908 Ruth deferred and his student English radio chemist Frederick Soddy were the first to realize that the anomalous behavior of radioactive elements was because they decayed into other elements in 1903 working with William Ramsay Soddy showed that the decay of radium produced helium gas for his work on the chemistry of radioactive substances Solly received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921 in 1907 was furred bombarded the thin glass wall of an evacuated tube with alpha particles to study the spectrum of the new gas inside there he discovered that alpha particles named after the first letter of the Greek alphabet were actually helium nuclei when those nuclei which were at this point an eye on because they had an electrical charge pick up electrons in the environment they become natural helium atoms in 1917 Danish physicist Niels Bohr another student of Rutherford looked at lines in the spectrum called the Pickering Fowler spectrum and determined that they were not as previously suggested a new form of hydrogen but instead were ionized helium the discovery changed the nature of the understanding of the atom leading to what is called the Bohr model which theorized that an atom is a system consisting of a small dense nucleus surrounded by revolving electrons while the model is now so greatly refined that it is said to be superseded by the valence shell model of the atom and quantum physics the Bohr model integrally connected to the discovery of terrestrial helium is still the most common way that the nature of the atom is described and familiar to virtually everyone who took middle school chemistry for his work Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 thus helium is a central part of the story of the history of modern science it was critical to the development and design of the periodic table of elements the discovery of radiation the foundation of quantum mechanics our understanding of the very nature of matter itself you have helium to thank or to blame for what you either enjoyed or suffered through depending upon your perspective for much of your middle school and high school science class and yet all these Nobel laureates had yet to produce enough helium to fill a single balloon the story of how we fill the helium balloon starts in Dexter Kansas in 1903 the some 400 residents of Dexter in far southern Cal week County were understandably excited that the discovery of a howling geyser of natural gas while natural gas was not yet recognized as the home heating and electrical generation source that it is today excited Kansans still envisioned the well as a source of new industries such as or smelters and brick and glass plants that would revolutionize the area economy the people of Dexter plant a large celebration including a brass band the gas was still escaping the drilling company hadn't gotten the equipment yet to cap it and the celebration was to be spectacular Lee capped off by the mayor lighting the escaping gas which was supposed to produce as fires at the time said a great pillar of flame from the burning well which will light the entire countryside for a day in the night but when they tried to light the flat fire using a burning bale of hay to the crowds disappointment it refused to light well this disappointment for the people of Dexter who saw their dreams of new prosperity decidedly refuse to go up in flames it intrigued a man named Erasmus he worth that Kansas state geologist he took a sample of the gas to the University of Kansas where with the help of chemistry professor David F MacFarlane and they went to solve the puzzle of the gas that wouldn't burn the answer was that the well only produced 15% combustible methane which would not burn in the presence of almost 72% non flammable nitrogen but more interestingly the sample contains some 12% unidentifiable inert gases MacFarland and a colleague Hamilton pkt further refined the gas with a complex process and found to their astonishment that the well gas was one point eight four percent helium Katie Ann McFarland then investigated gas wells throughout Kansas Oklahoma and Missouri in 1906 they reported a very unusual opportunity for obtaining helium in practically unlimited quantities when their findings were published in November 1907 Kayla commented that their work determined that supplies of helium in natural gas in the American Great Plains asurs the fact that helium is no longer a rare element but a common element existing in good quantity for uses that are yet to be found for it no one really had a good use for helium yet but suddenly they had a source for it terrestrial helium as a result of radioactive decay of minerals of uranium and thorium whose unstable atoms emit alpha particles helium nuclei which then collect electrons and become helium the helium accumulates and is trapped or cluded within the mineral in this way an estimated 3,000 metric tons of helium are generated per year throughout the years crossed but that means that helium is a non-renewable resource there are finite quantities of these minerals what's more helium has the lowest boiling point of all the elements and is mentioned earlier as the second lightest of the elements when helium is released into the atmosphere it quickly turns to gas and escapes losing that non-renewable resource forever because helium is trapped in the subsurface under conditions that also trapped natural gas the greatest natural concentrations of helium on the planet are found in natural gas under places like Dexter Kansas and is from there that most commercial helium is extracted the u.s. Navy built three experimental planets to refine helium from natural gas during World War one for the use of non flammable lifting gas for barrage balloons although a more efficient process would later be devised the plants produce some 200,000 cubic feet of helium during the war that was an astounding amount as previously less than a single cubic meter of helium had been obtained in all of world history the helium act of 1925 created the National helium reserve northwest of Amarillo Texas in a natural geologic gas storage formation the bush dome reservoir at the time the US Senate virtual monopoly on the gas which was used to fill naval airships seen as a key strategic material the Act banned export of the gas which they shouldn't hardly produce an enough quantity to fill its military airships that scarcity was one of the reasons that the Zeppelin Hindenburg was filled with more cheaply obtained but highly flammable hydrogen as its lifting gas with disastrous results helium filled blimps were used for submarine patrols during the Second World War where the Allie's had a monopoly on the gas however it played at least one more role because of its unique characteristics helium was used in a special mass spectrometer used to detect small leaks the helium mass spectrometer was a critical tool used in the Manhattan Project and the development of atomic weapons after the war the unique properties of liquid helium made it an important coolant for rocket fuel and other strategic uses during the Cold War and the US government continued its virtual monopoly amendments to the helium act in 1960 funded the creation of plants to refine helium from natural gas and ship it via pipeline to the strategic reserve but by the mid 90s the helium reserve had over a billion cubic meters of the gas and had racked up 1.4 billion dollars in debt there were greater private demands for the gas which many applications in industry and scientific research in 1996 the u.s. decided to sell off the gas with the helium privatization act the reserve to biess was to be sold in order to pay off the debt acquired by creating it you might have heard recently about a helium shortage in price shocks the government was criticized for its process of pricing helium which sold off the helium from the reserve well below market prices and that discouraged conservation and the development of new sources as the gas and the reserves started to go away then the government had to raise prices in order to get enough money to pay off the reserves outstanding debt meanwhile other new sources like a plant that was being built in Wyoming didn't come online as quickly as some people thought that they would and other new sources in the Middle East and Africa were disrupted due to political instability the price shocks and according to the New York Times there have been three major helium shortages in the past 14 years threaten a number of industries that use helium for leak detection scuba diving medical therapy and of course balloons including the ones in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade helium because the inert gas can be chilled at almost absolute zero is also central for a number of scientific applications including the Large Hadron Collider but its largest use is not science or balloons but as a coolant for the magnets in magnetic resonance imaging or MRI machines without helium the machines wear up very quickly now 23 years after having decided to sell off its helium reserve there is a new helium conservation act that has been moving through Congress although there's been some difficulty getting it passed and some scientists argue that frivolous uses like party balloons should be limited still most helium that is actually extracted today is never refined out it's considered a useless industrial byproduct and estimates of newly found reserves suggest that the helium reserves and the earth are far larger than once thought if only we'll make the effort to collect them and so there's a very good chance that the gas that was so important to the history of science will continue to lift us into the future don't all good stories involve parrots ah I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes don't forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe you

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 704,252

Keywords: history, the history guy, science, chemistry, helium, national strategic helium reserve, history guy

Id: AsKDLaDehbI

Length: 17min 43sec (1063 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2019