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                                                                                  ♡ B A S I C S ♡

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                                                                                  ♡ B A S I C S ♡

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Name: Helium
Symbol: He
Atomic Number: 2
Atomic Mass: 4.003
State: Gas
Classification: Nonmetal
Period: 1
Group: 18
Family Name: Noble Gases

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                                                                          ✿ D I S C O V E R Y ✿

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                                                                          ✿ D I S C O V E R Y ✿

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Before helium was discovered on Earth, it was first discovered on the sun.

In 1868, a French Astronomer, Pierre-Jules-César Janssen, spotted a yellow line in the sun's spectrum while studying a total solar eclipse.

An English astronomer, Sir Norman Lockyer, realized that this line could not be produced by any element known at the time and concluded that a new element on the sun was responsible for this mysterious yellow emission.

Lockyer named this unknown element helium, based on the Greek god of the sun, Helios.

In 1895, a Scottish chemist, Sir William Ramsay, conducted an experiment with a mineral called clevite. He exposed the mineral to mineral acids and collected the gases that were produced.

He sent a sample of these gases to Lockyer and Sir William Crookes, who were able to identify the helium within it.

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                                                                ♡ P R O P E R T I E S  &  U S E S ♡

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                                                                ♡ P R O P E R T I E S  &  U S E S ♡

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Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe and  makes up about 0.0005% of the Earth's atmosphere.

It is also the second-lightest element in the universe, has the lowest boiling-point of any gas, and is commonly used through the world to inflate party balloons.

It is an nonreactive, colorless, and odorless gas. Helium is also an inert gas and does not easily combine with other elements.

Some of it's uses include:

Airships - Since helium is lighter than air, it can be used to inflate airships, blimps, and balloons, providing lift. It is greatly preferred compared to the cheaper option of hydrogen because helium is non - flammable making it the safer choice.

MRI Scanners - Helium's low boiling point makes it useful to cool down the superconductive magnets coil in MRI scanners to a temperature below 10 Kelvin.

Deep - Sea Diving - Divers use mixtures of helium, oxygen and nitrogen to breathe underwater, avoiding the problems caused by breathing ordinary air under high pressure

Rockets - Helium is used to clean out rocket engines, pressurize the interior of liquid fuel rockets, condense hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel, and force fuel into the engines during rocket launches.

Dating - It can also be used to estimate the age of rocks and minerals containing uranium and thorium by measuring their possession of helium.

Telescopes - It is used in solar telescopes to prevent the heating of the air, which reduces the distorting effects of temperature variations in the space between lenses.

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                                                                  ✿  T H E   H E L I U M   C R I S I S  ✿

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                                                                  ✿  T H E   H E L I U M   C R I S I S  ✿

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Due to an obscure 1996 law, the Federal Helium Reserve was scheduled to close on Oct. 7, locking 10 billion cubic feet of helium underground, eliminating 35% of the world's helium supply.

But recently, the House and Senate approved a bill that would keep the Federal Helium Reserve open and slowly end the reserve's practice of giving away the gas for below - market rates, a practice that has led to excessive waste of the scarce resource.

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The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that would allow the government to continue selling its stockpiled helium, raising hopes that legislators can avoid a looming disruption in the helium trade that researchers and high-tech companies say would be disastrous.

Helium, an inert lighter-than-air gas, not only fills balloons, but is also essential for manufacturing optical fiber and microchips. It is also simply irreplaceable in cooling MRI machines, purging rocket engines, and performing many types of physics research. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is a major supplier of the stuff. As directed by Congress in 1996, it has been selling the gas under complicated rules designed to recoup the $1.3 billion that taxpayers spent building the reserve mainly during the Cold War.

Those rules are set to expire in October and, without a new congressional authorization, the sales would stop. A stoppage would likely create a massive shortage of helium; the federal sales now account for 42% of U.S. helium production and 35% of global production.

The Senate measure now moves to the House of Representatives, which passed a similar bill in April by a count of 394 to 1-with the one nay vote being a mistake. The two bills differ slightly in how the remaining helium will be auctioned off. BLM has been selling the helium at a rate set only to recover the government's investment. That price is now suppressing the market value for crude helium and discouraging conservation and exploration for new supplies, according to a 2010 study by the National Research Council of the National Academies. The auction would aim to establish a fairer price for BLM helium.

Research groups are overjoyed by the Senate's move to lift the helium bill across the finish line. In a statement, Marinda Li Wu, president of the American Chemical Society, applauded the vote and warned of the consequences of inaction: "If the liquid helium supply was to suddenly vanish, our society would be turned upside down."

If the House and Senate quickly come to agreement on the bill, the measure should receive a warm welcome at the White House. Today, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a statement saying that "[t]he Administration strongly supports" the Senate bill.

But such agreement isn't yet a done deal. The two bills also differ in what they would do with the proceeds of the continuing sales, which should amount to about $140 million per year. Senate Democrats would like to use that money to pay for things like backlogged maintenance at national parks. House Republicans would like to use it to reduce the federal deficit.

"Differences in deficit reduction and spending will need to be resolved," said Doc Hastings (R-WA), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee and co-sponsor of the House bill, in a statement. Some Washington insiders worry that that issue may still keep legislators from reaching an agreement in time to avoid floating off the helium cliff.
*Correction, 11:01 a.m., 20 September: The story has been corrected to reflect that federal sales account for 42% of U.S. helium production and 35% of global production, instead of meeting similar percentages of demand.

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U.S. Senate Passes Bill to Head Off Helium Shortage

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The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that would allow the government to continue selling its stockpiled helium, raising hopes that legislators can avoid a looming disruption in the helium trade that researchers and high-tech companies say would be disastrous. Helium, an inert lighter-than-air gas, not only fills balloons, but is also essential for manufacturing optical fiber and microchips.

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                                            ♡ HELIUM BALLOON RIDES TO THE EDGE OF SPACE ♡

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                                            ♡ HELIUM BALLOON RIDES TO THE EDGE OF SPACE ♡

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World View Enterprises plans to use a helium balloon to lift big-ticket customers in a pressurized capsule to nearly 100,000 feet. For a price of $75,000, 8 passengers can take a journey to the edge of space.

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                                                      ✿ HGST'S HELIUM FILLED HARD DRIVES ✿

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                                                      ✿ HGST'S HELIUM FILLED HARD DRIVES ✿

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HGST, a data-storage company, is producing a 6 - terabyte hard drive that has a 50% greater storage capacity and uses about 20% less power than conventional hard drives by pumping the drives full of helium. Helium reduces friction, vibration, and other mechanical issues that limit storage density of conventional hard drives. It even makes hard drives less power hungry.

The hard-drive industry has been eyeing helium for years now, but no company has ever been able to make it work because helium tends to leak out of whatever container it’s placed inside. HGST claims that they have overcome these challenges and is producing hard drives guaranteed to last five years.

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Western Digital subsidiary HGST announced today that it is shipping a 6TB hard disk drive with a twist: it's a hermetically sealed, helium-filled HDD.

The new Ultrastar He6 drive is the world's highest capacity HDD with the best cost of ownership for cloud storage, massive scale-out environments, disk-to-disk backup, and replicated or RAID environments, according to HGST.

"With ever-increasing pressures on corporate and cloud data centers to improve storage efficiencies and reduce costs, HGST is at the forefront delivering a revolutionary new solution that significantly improves data center TCO on virtually every level – capacity, power, cooling and storage density – all in the same 3.5-inch form factor," Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at HGST, said in a statement. "Not only is our new Ultrastar helium hard drive helping customers solve data center challenges today, our mainstream helium platform will serve as the future building block for new products and technologies moving forward."

Why helium? According to HGST, helium has "one-seventh the density of air," so using helium "dramatically reduces the turbulence caused by the spinning disk, cuts power consumption and results in a lower temperature within the disk drive."

The Ultrastar He6, which maintains the traditional 3.5-inch form factor, is being targeted at businesses, and companies that have signed on to try it out include HP, Netflix, Huawei Unified Storage, CERN, Green Revolution Cooling, and Code42.

"The Netflix Open Connect delivery platform is a highly optimized video content delivery network. We serve billions of hours of streaming video per quarter to over 40 million subscribers," said David Fullagar, director of Content Delivery Architecture at Netflix. "As part of our efforts to optimize the delivery ecosystem for Netflix and our Internet Service Provider partners, we strive to build better and better streaming appliances. The high storage density and lower power usage of the Ultrastar He6 hard drives allow us to continue with that goal, and create a great customer experience."

As PCMag's sister site, Geek.com, pointed out, these helium-filled drives have been in the works for more than a year, but are now finally shipping.

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Western Digital's HGST Ships 6TB Helium-Filled Hard Drive

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Western Digital subsidiary HGST announced today that it is shipping a 6TB hard disk drive with a twist: it's a hermetically sealed, helium-filled HDD. The new Ultrastar He6 drive is the world's highest capacity HDD with the best cost of ownership for cloud storage, massive scale-out environments, disk-to-disk backup, and replicated or RAID environments, according to HGST.

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                                                                             ♡ R E S O U R C E S ♡

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                                                                             ♡ R E S O U R C E S ♡

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Winter, Mark. "Helium." WebElements Periodic Table of the Elements. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
<http://www.webelements.com/helium/>.
Gagnon, Steve. "The Element Helium." It's Elemental. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
<http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele002.html>.
Peckham, Matt. "HGST Unveils World’s First 6TB Hard Drive Packing Helium | TIME.com." Time. Time, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
<http://techland.time.com/2013/11/04/hgst-unveils-worlds-first-6tb-hard-drive-packing-helium/>.
Dodson, Brian. "World View Enterprises Near-space Balloon Flights to Begin in 2016."World View Enterprises Near-space Balloon Flights to Begin in 2016. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
<http://www.gizmag.com/space-tourism-balloon-world-view/29510/>.
"Helium Facts." Helium Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. <http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/prog/energy/helium/helium_facts.html>.