It gets smarter in sixty seconds with brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi, I'm marshall brain. Have you ever wondered where helium comes from? It's actually an interesting question. If you put helium into a balloon and let go of the balloon, the balloon rises until it pops. When it pops, the helium that escapes has no reason to stop. It just keeps going and leaks out into space. Therefore, there is very little helium in the atmosphere at any
given time. The helium that we put into balloons has to be created, and most of it gets created by uranium. Most helium on Earth comes from radioactive decay like this. A radioactive alpha particle is really just a helium nucleus. It picks up a couple of electrons and it becomes a helium atom. In places that have a lot of uranium ore, natural gas tends to contain high concentrations of helium,
up to seven percent. This makes sense because the decay of uranium emits lots of alpha particles, and a natural gas pocket tends to be just a big sealed container underground to hold the helium. Helium is cryogenically distilled out of the natural gas to produce the helium that we put into balloons. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email
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