I'm about to make a lot of people angry about helium (if they weren't already aware).
Liquid helium is the best substance we have to supercool shit. I'm talking very very cold. Helium cooling systems can get us within millionths of a degree above absolute zero.
Almost all groundbreaking modern science requires cooling shit down.
We are working on room temperature superconductors that don't require supercooling, but progress has been slow. We are pretty sure it is possible in theory, but it's unclear if a practical, scalable solution could ever be found.
So until then, we need to make things really frickin' cold.
Helium is vital for cooling the magnets in MRI scanners. If we run out of helium and the magical room temp conductor isn't invented, MRIs will literally be useless.
Pretty much all of our space hardware uses helium.
Particle physics research is dependent on supercolliders. No helium, no smashing protons together to see what happens.
Oh, were you excited about quantum computing helping to cure cancer?
Gotta have that cold ass helium.
8% of our total helium supply is used for party balloons.
I know that may not sound like a lot. But once the helium is gone... it is fucking GONE.
We cannot synthesize more and there isn't an alternative that can take over supercooling duties.
While we won't completely run out for hundreds of years, it will get more and more scarce. It could only be 30 years before helium is so rare that it will need to be rationed. It will become exorbitantly expensive and only the people with the most funding will have access to it.
So... enjoy your $10,000 "Get Well Soon" balloon in the hospital after getting a $50,000 MRI scan.
The infuriating part of this... no one cares.
There has been almost no success getting political bodies to regulate the non-essential use of helium.
So 8% of our helium goes into balloons and either leaks away into the atmosphere or goes into people's lungs so they can sound like a chipmunk.
Can we get more helium from space?
There is a lot of helium on the moon. And maybe in a hundred years we could figure out a way to bring it back to Earth.
Our best chance is if a helium-filled asteroid flew towards Earth at the perfect angle so it gets caught in orbit. If it burns up in the atmosphere, we'd lose the helium. If it crashes on Earth, we'd lose the helium.
I'd say the chances of that are 1 in a number so big it would take you a day to count all the zeros.
If we develop our space program to the point where we can go to the asteroid belt and land on things and mine them, we could probably reclaim some helium. But that would probably happen long after we have a serious helium scarcity.
Our only chance to realistically solve this problem within our lifetimes is room temperature superconductors.
But it would be really nice if we stopped putting this vital shit inside of balloons that kids play with for 20 seconds and forget about.
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