Liquid helium cools the magnets in the Large Hadron Collider.
Credit: CERN
At a couple of degrees above absolute zero, far colder than any living organism can survive, liquid helium stirs to life the largest particle accelerators in the world.
It pulses through the veins of Europe's Large Hadron Collider, following thousands of dipole superconducting magnets around a 27-kilometer ring.
Flowing through magnets in Fermilab's Tevatron, Illinois, helium helps jump-start subatomic particles on their way. These and other vital organs at dozens of labs around the world depend on helium to help them thrive.
Hot air balloons, blimps, car airbag systems, welding, leak detection, scuba breathing mixtures, and NASA space shuttles all use helium.
Cryogenics, which includes cooling for particle accelerators and detectors, consumes 28% of helium in the U.S., with half of that chilling tens of thousands of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI, machines. And the market is growing.
At the turn of the 20th century, natural gas miners found helium coming from underground, produced by the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. It appears in pockets of natural gas in small portions, with 3% helium considered a good ratio.
Although helium is relatively easy to extract, it falls on the natural gas companies to capture the gas or let it go.
Lighter than air, helium released from the Earth escapes the atmosphere into space.
As the second-smallest atom in the universe, the cunning gas finds its freedom through almost any opening, joint or crack, eventually leaking out of party balloons and even passing through some types of glass. Like oil, coal, and natural gas, Earth's supply of helium will inevitably run out.
While the physics community is aware of this impending problem, says Fermilab cryogenic engineer Tom Peterson, "we're just not sure what to do."
"Helium," says Serge Claudet, "is a very nice gas."
Claudet is head of the Large Hadron Collider's cryogenics operation team, and he has a very specific set of qualifications for a "nice gas."
