I love it when articles have random units of measurements like that!
1 liter of liquid helium expands to .74m^3 of gaseous helium at room temperature. A 16" party balloon has .042 m^3 of space, so requires .05 liters of liquid helium.
So one MRI machine can hold ~30,000 balloons worth of helium and leaks about 39 balloons per day.
Note: This is not to suggest helium that is used for balloons is being redirected from MRI machines. As the article states, helium is captured almost exclusively as a byproduct of natural gas mining and any excess helium not worth capturing is just vented off. Reducing demand for helium by eliminating party balloons would have no affect on the amount of helium that is released from the ground.
If/when it’s not, you might slow down on the helium-rich gas fields and bulk up on the 100% hydrocarbon fields, especially if natural gas is selling for a lot.
Regardless of helium supplies, party balloons are problematic because they tend to escape and contaminate the environment with rubber and plastic. I frequently see empty mylar balloons floating in the ocean.
You can estimate decay rates from net heat generated by the earth, but only a tiny fraction of the helium produced is close enough to the surface to be captured by us. On top of this helium is really good at escaping confinement so you need very specific geological formations to end up with significant quantities.
(I do agree we should conserve it rather than use it for frivolous purposes.)
Interestingly enough, Google told me there are only 14 gasses that are lighter than air. They are:
* acetylene
* ammonia
* carbon monoxide
* diborane
* ethylene
* helium
* hydrogen
* hydrogen cyanide
* hydrogen fluoride
* methane
* methyl lithium
* neon
* nitrogen
* water vapor
Wiki lists most of them at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_gas , although it leaves out ethylene, methyl lithium, and diborane for some reason. It also doesn't explicitly list carbon monoxide, but talks about it under "coal gas."
Of those, only hydrogen and helium are even vaguely suitable for party balloons, due primarily to their nasty chemical properties and/or expense.
Bear in mind that it boils/condenses at about 26C, so it's only suitable for parties with lots of dancing or warm summer nights.
Wow, that got dark quickly.
Give a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Less similar, but another classic of dark humor, is the poster of Stalin captioned:
Dark humor is like food.
Not everyone gets it.
Diborane, among other things, autoignites in an oxygen atmosphere at 38C, and also burns on contact with water. It manages a rare NFPA fire diamond of 4 4 3.
It is tough to be a less practical lifting gas than hydrogen cyanide or hydrogen fluoride, but I think diborane manages it.
>Because of the exothermicity of its reaction with oxygen, diborane has been tested as a rocket propellant.[32] ... Diborane is pyrophoric gas. Commercially available adducts are typically used instead ... The toxic effects of diborane are mitigated because the compound is so unstable in air. The toxicity toward laboratory rats has been investigated.[38]
> HF has actually been used right out of the cylinder for a long time in Merrifield peptide synthesizers. It’s the traditional way to cleave the peptide off the resin at the final step, so there are actually a lot of people who’ve used the stuff. But it’s in a dedicated apparatus that is (that had better be) well sealed, and people treat it with due respect. At a former employer of mine, there was an accident with one of these machines right before I joined the company. The shout “HF LEAK!” went out into the halls, and I’m told that the whole area set a never-to-be-equaled evacuation record.
By the fire diamond metric, HF is relatively tame, at 4 0 1, except that anything with a health rating of 4 ("very short exposure could cause death or major residual injury") is unsuitable for most purposes. So you can't set it on fire. Doesn't matter.
Filling your party balloons with hydrogen is one way to make sure your party goes off with a bang!
While methane is a greenhouse gas, as the article mentions, the amount used for balloons under any realistic scenario is going to be dwarfed by the megatons of methane that enter the atmosphere from natural processes (and, of course, natural gas is mostly methane). It's also dirt-cheap.
I think it's probably easier to avoid dangerous leaks than with hydrogen, though. Hydrogen molecules are small and sneaky.
... or a stoichiometric mixture of hydrogen+oxygen: https://youtu.be/l9CI6KSV560?t=1625
Quite a party.
> I would say that no one on Earth could comprehend 1.4 trillion balloons
Consider this: If everyone on the planet got 1 party balloon every month, we'd deplete that helium source in about 10 years.
There's a uniquely British phenomenon where large areas are given in terms of Wales. I think it's probably down to our national inability to decide if we're metric or imperial.
In completely metric Germany, we often use "Saarlands", which is also, like Wales, the smallest country / state.
1 Wales = 8 Saarlands
More info: https://www.theregister.com/2007/08/24/vulture_central_stand...
There's a right way and a wrong way to deal with quantities. This is a right way:
https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-conver...
That's not really a random unit of measurement. It's the only use of helium the audience can be expected to be familiar with.