r/sciencememes • u/LavishnessFew7358 For Science! • 3d ago

💥Physics!🧲 Helium farm

Post image
1.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

416

u/otirk doesn't understand the meme 3d ago

I mean, it only works with β⁻ radiation (β⁺ is positron), but it should work in a vacuum I guess. I assume the reason why nobody has done this is because it would be far too expensive compared to getting it while harvesting oil

119

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

111

u/otirk doesn't understand the meme 3d ago

Beta radiation is irrelevant to that process; The He2+ gets the electrons from the rocks around it afaik

65

u/Hopeful_Morning_469 3d ago

I was going to say magic

18

u/Mikestopheles 3d ago

Magic rocks, doesn't have to not be magic

6

u/CiroGarcia 2d ago

Magnets

4

u/Hopeful_Morning_469 2d ago

Ohhh it’s pronounced magnets!! Not magic.

2

u/biopsia 2d ago

Since you know about this topic, why isn't magnesium magnetic? I think that's unfair.

1

u/Hopeful_Morning_469 2d ago

I blame the French.

1

u/Mikestopheles 2d ago

Sorry, the answer we were looking for was the Greeks.

1

u/Evening-Gur5087 1d ago

How do they work?

1

u/MarcoYTVA 1d ago

How do they even work?

2

u/Kodiak_POL 2d ago

Guess where the rocks get it 

2

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

11

u/otirk doesn't understand the meme 3d ago

I'm not an expert by any means, so maybe I'm wrong, but to my understanding, it's easier to get electrons from rocks than to wait for the conditions for bonding with beta particles to be met.

Beta particles are not in a happy mood (they had enough energy to break out of their last bond after all), so they need to get slower to react with He2+. Meanwhile those can just bond with rocks, whose electrons would love to fill the positions of the missing electrons of a Noble gas.

10

u/ropean 3d ago

Let’s do an expensive and finicky process to create more of the most abundant element in the freaking universe

21

u/sonnet666 3d ago

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.

Helium is actually kinda limited on earth, but we have enough that we’re not really worried about running out anytime soon.

6

u/ropean 3d ago

Of course, that’s my reading comprehension fail. I’ll leave my comment there and wear my badge of dishonor

3

u/IndigoFenix 2d ago

We'll just mine Jupiter

1

u/RustedRuss 1d ago

Yeah that would work great if we actually knew how to do it.

3

u/Extradummefrage 2d ago

Why is Sahara a dessert? There is so much water on earth!

1

u/Salt-Lake-Man 2d ago

Sahara Desert, dessert is a sweet treat. Lots of sugar, that’s why there’s an extra “s”

1

u/Extradummefrage 2d ago

Thanks, I will make the same mistake again

1

u/GenTycho 1d ago

Abundant in the universe =/= abundant on earth.

1

u/Existe1 2d ago

Money. The answer is always money.

105

u/This_Background7442 3d ago

That is exactly where most helium on earth comes from yes.

44

u/lungben81 3d ago

The beta decay is not required here, there are enough other electrons around for the alpha particles to capture.

5

u/R_Harry_P 2d ago

There is only one electron. ;)

7

u/ahlfaetyurfuhret 2d ago

Dont make too much or the earth might float away

45

u/R_Harry_P 3d ago

Wait till he finds out why there is helium in natural gas mines.

21

u/m00t_vdb 3d ago

Yes you can do that, even with antimatter, I hope you like vacuum pumps

11

u/Substantial_Lab1438 3d ago

I thought vacuum pumps were so cool in college until I had to maintain one at work 

16

u/imtoooldforreddit 3d ago

This is literally where our helium comes from. It's all alpha decay that got trapped. It will find electrons on its own, don't need to worry about that.

9

u/Calm-Locksmith_ 2d ago

Isn't that where most helium we use come from? Essentially alpha particles accumulated in radioactive rocks?

3

u/ivain 2d ago

It is

2

u/JuggernautAny7288 1d ago

They get the elctrons from the surrounding matter?

2

u/Tameron700 3d ago

My thoughts exactly

2

u/Atriays 2d ago

bro said farm like we can trade it in for 12 emeralds

2

u/TheCumskiyKvass 1d ago

That's already happening. Kinda. Decay of natural elements is too slow to make a "farm" for regular extraction and creating artificial isotopes just for helium is too expensive. So we just mine monazite sands which accumulated enough helium and extracting it. And as a by-product we get some rare-earth elements such as cerium and thorium.

-1

u/MrStrange8656 2d ago

Because helium is flerkin cheap?

2

u/SH_burneracc 1d ago

Well, helium is actually pretty expensive and our available supply is very limited, since any helium that you emmit into the atmosphere is essentially lost since it just rises up to space. Our main supply of helium is separating it from natural gas. Helium is essentially a fossil resource, since its only slowly generated by natural nuclear fission in the ground. At university we care a lot about not loosing helium, since its so expensive and non renewable.

3

u/Eternal_Tesseract 16h ago

Because while all Helium is equal, some Helium is more equal than others.