With supplies dwindling, researchers discover a massive helium field in Africa

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.

Researchers say the amount of helium found in just one section of the Rift Valley is enough to fill more than 1 million MRI scanners, and now they just need to determine the best area to drill. "Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe but it's exceedingly rare on Earth," Prof. John Gluyas of Durham University's Department of Earth Sciences told the BBC. "Moreover, any helium that you do find if you're not careful will escape, just like a party balloon it rises and rises in the atmosphere and eventually escapes the Earth's gravity altogether."

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