Helium is used for a variety of things — to keep satellite instruments cool, to fill balloons, to clean rocket engines — which is why researchers are ecstatic over the discovery of a giant helium gas field in Tanzania's East African Rift Valley, estimated at more than 54 billion cubic feet.
"This is a game-changer for the future security of society's helium needs and similar finds in the future may not be far away," Prof. Chris Ballentine of Oxford University's Earth Sciences Department told the BBC. Helium is formed by the steady radioactive decay of terrestrial rock, and researchers say in the Rift Valley, volcanic activity is releasing helium buried in old rocks that becomes trapped in shallower gas fields. Because the world's helium supply was being depleted, the price has gone up 500 percent over the last 15 years.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Today's political cartoons - April 20, 2025Cartoons Sunday's cartoons - Pam Bondi, retirement planning, and more
-
5 heavy-handed cartoons about ICE and deportationCartoons Artists take on international students, the Supreme Court, and more
-
Exploring the three great gardens of JapanThe Week Recommends Beautiful gardens are 'the stuff of Japanese landscape legends'
-
Scientists find hint of alien life on distant worldSpeed Read NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has detected a possible signature of life on planet K2-18b
-
Katy Perry, Gayle King visit space on Bezos rocketSpeed Read Six well-known women went into lower orbit for 11 minutes
-
Scientists map miles of wiring in mouse brainSpeed Read Researchers have created the 'largest and most detailed wiring diagram of a mammalian brain to date,' said Nature
-
Scientists genetically revive extinct 'dire wolves'Speed Read A 'de-extinction' company has revived the species made popular by HBO's 'Game of Thrones'
-
Dark energy may not doom the universe, data suggestsSpeed Read The dark energy pushing the universe apart appears to be weakening
-
Pharaoh's tomb discovered for first time in 100 yearsSpeed Read This is the first burial chamber of a pharaoh unearthed since Tutankhamun in 1922
-
Scientists report optimal method to boil an eggSpeed Read It takes two temperatures of water to achieve and no fancy gadgets
-
Europe records big leap in renewable energySpeed Read Solar power overtook coal for the first time
