Technology

59390 readers

2840 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

370

"A dream. It's perfect": Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America (www.cbsnews.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

113 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"A dream. It's perfect": Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America::For a century, the U.S. Government-owned the largest helium reserve in the country, but the biggest exporters now are in Russia, Qatar and Tanzania. With this new discovery, Minnesota could be joining that list.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 185 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (86 children)

Hopefully we stop wasting this limited resource on fucking balloons.

Edit: well this kicked off a fun and respectful conversation. The information I can find from actual scientists says wasting helium on balloons is bad. The balloon lobby says it is just a waste byproduct. The balloon lobby brings nothing of value to the world in terms of plastic or helium use, so I'm going to go with the science opinion on this one.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

helium just boils off in MRI/NMR machines, this is the major use of helium i think. if you could recycle that in machines that already are out there, that would solve lots of problems. there are newer systems that do not require cryogens or just require liquid nitrogen which is much cheaper and less energy intensive. these things use closed loop refrigeration, but in turn you need to supply them with power

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like superconductor research could end up fixing that problem. Once we have a suitable conductor material, you no longer need to keep it that cool.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

not exactly, because if someone finds out that high temperature superconductor works even better at 4K, then it will be running at 4K, making entire thing more compact or allowing for higher fields

load more comments (84 replies)