I visited the US National Helium Reserve 

ok

These are the important questions

Randy is a good doggo.

Know your audience

That is adorable.

hehe

underrated

You sound like you'd be a gas at parties.

(slow clap)

Can I call you daddy

Fun fact: Methane-filled party ballons are a thing.

Good idea! I'll have them floating around right as I blow the candles!

"Okay little timmy, you can either have ballons OR candles at your birthday, both is no longer an option."

RDSk that’s got to be a shitty party 😂

@@RDSk0 the fact that methane-filled party balloons aren't very common is probably a good thing.

I'm a bit unsure whether this is a personal problem, or a personnel problem.

Tim Vine joke?

@@Tjalve70 not bad.

@@Tjalve70 stand up comic gathering

This actually made me laugh, like proper laugh, not nose exhale. You've earned that like

small nation is discovered to have massive amounts of helium United States: *allow us to introduce ourselves*

@@allmyfriendsaredead3107 time for some freeedom

@@anubhavghosh4556 Help. I accidently ate some oil. Please help.

@@edwinhuang9244 dont worry, we'll be sending our best army to free you from that oil very soon

@@anubhavghosh4556 time to manifest our destiny all over this helium reserve!

great scott !

And this... (exciting buildup) ...is just regular air. (dissapointment)

@@reimarpb _sad Trombone_

I honestly thought it would be full of sulphur hexaflouride for maximum contrariness.

So the next best thing we have is Tom (and the TechDif crew) blowing a solid tuba.

Your party must have been an absolute banger

lmao

must be a fire party

so, let me get this straight....how many survived

Germans once did that. A huge cruiseship with hydrogen balloon And the result wasn't that good. I mean you should check that disaster

Hahaha

Anyway

A really underated comment right there! You win the internet for today, sir.

Just like Bubble Boy did back a while ago.

Until we seek to liberate another country to procure their helium reserves

Great joke, dad

You deserve 1k likes

Mainly because a large part of it is found or formed in Stars. And we have quite a lot of stars in the universe

Sun has plenty of it, why won't Elon just fly there and grab some? /s

@@gaetano_kojj Didn't you listen? It would escape from the bed of his stainless steel truck xD

@@gaetano_kojj actually someone already design concept on how to mine the sun

@@nepunepu5894 found the sfia viewer

Haha I thought the same thing

And another aspect: if we knew for certain that there is helium for exactly 2000 years out there, we'd spend it in 200.

Oh, a Hindenburg-themed birthday party!

I prefer balloons full of nitrous oxide,now those are REAL party balloons.

That would get your party going with a bang

How bout ‘party balloons filled with cheese’

Honestly, hydrogen balloons are way better than helium. Stronger lift, cheaper and easier to produce, and the byproduct is oxygen.

Sebastian Elytron Skusowiskwoa

*groan*

You are a Punny guy

I used to work at a helium mining operation, but I quit. I was tired of being spoken to in that tone.

yep

Same

yes, experts have stated that if we do not step up our conservation efforts, we may not see any more tom scotts in 100 years.

Apparently there is a 15km wide meteorite in the Oort cloud made entirely of Tom Scott's.

@@namelast6982 Why won't Elon just fly there and grab some?

@@jodroboxes He's busy fixing his armoured glass.

Tom Scott is running out of helium

Is it just 4 big circles?

isnt it funny that the guy with 1.8 million subscribers only has 3 replies

@@Mrawesome7123 now 4.

Can you do an episode on Landfills?

The helium nucleus and the atom are perfectly spherical.

both = lit party

As silly as it sounds, I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say to a child. They'll understand it better than we probably give them credit for.

Aren't mylar balloons really flammable anyway?

"Ok big timmy, do you want alcohol, candles, or balloons at your party. You can pick 2."

The only thing more fun than a hydrogen balloon is a vacuum balloon

Hmmm verified

I’m big fan

OK, I unironically watch *almost* all of your videos.

Hi Jarvis

Hello channel with 1 million subscribers

No, we are crawling out

That's good.

some times it swims

We're moseying out of helium... Sauntering, even.

In the timescale of civilizations, though, we are racing out of it on horseback. There's only enough of it for maybe a couple centuries as far as we know, and the need for it can rise faster than the finite supply might, due to being essential to basic services like healthcare for an increasing global population that will cap out in the 10-11 billions.

That is your problem though. The video isn't called "me on helium"

Same.

Boo hoo 3d squelton hates lies

But Charlie looked it up tho

HAHAHA! good one!

Well, people are selfish

Because the technological landscape is going to be completely different within 80 years. In 20 years, new prospecting and extraction methods will shift the estimate again to 80 years. After another 20 years, again and so on. And/Or somewhere along the way, actual production of Helium becomes feasible, like for example as a byproduct of fusion reactors. And/Or alternatives to Helium are found or machines are fitted to work better with the alternatives. Like when the world was about to run out of copper, because of the great new invention of the telegraph. The market adjusts and a few decades later, we aren't really using copper for telecommunication cables anymore. Now we use cables for which the resource is as plentiful as sand in the Sahara. Literally.

Stefan Gruber U right... 80 years isnt enough time to say fk it, but its more than enough time for technology to change drastically which impacts both supply and demand.

@@samuelyoung2671 isnt that what they said about fossil fuels? We've been highly dependent on them without any real alternatives since 1876. A huge portion of electricity is still dependent on burning coal and many island nations use diesel generators for their electricity.

@@DCassidy42 people said the exact same thing about coal back in the day, until oil replaced it. Now it looks like we may soon burn more and more natural gas. Given the unbelievable size of oil left in the world (Wikipedia says an estimate of 250 billion barrels in the U.S. alone), it seems much more likely that we will stop burning oil to alleviate climate change than stop burning it because we run out.

reserves yes helium no most of the earths helium isnt in reserves its still in the ground

Be warned of the grammar nazis.

No, we're not, but the generations after us will be.

Yesn't*

@@beforecuddlybunnylps841 Found one 👆

And look, we still have 80-100 years of oil left. We found more.

@@SuperSMT OK... That's almost no oil. So civilization will be brought to its knees in a century? Not our problem, I guess...

@@TheCuriousNoob you just keep saying that we're running out every 100 years. its just like the apocalypse, won't happen.

@@vladtheimpaler1570 well, it will happen *eventually*. But we don't know when. And it will be gradual, not cataclysmic.

The old known sources of oil was 100 years worth. The current known sources of oil is 100 years worth. The future known sources of oil will be ??? years worth. We will find more, but when will we run out of finding more?

Sulphur hexafluoride

Fun fact: SF6 has the one of the highest global warming potentials of any gases. It's about 16 000 times more powerful than CO2

@@patrickhector no, the guy was right. the technical term is in fact sulfur hexa-thingamajiggy

mike osted I had also had a momentary hope that the ballon contained sulfur hexafluoride but then realized that would be an even worse message to send, because SF6 is a terrible greenhouse gas, so bad that Nike no longer uses it to inflate their “Air Jordan” sneakers (and that’s something else you might not know).

I thought the same, the voice of Darth Vader instead of Micky Mouse :-)

There's a big difference between a decade and a lifetime. Lots and lots of things change in a lifetime. We went from a species ground to the Earth, to flying in planes, to walking on the moon in a mere 70 years. It's not impossible that we'll be able to manufacture helium in 80-100 years time.

@@PrincessPeriodFart or just find more for that matter.

@David Daivdson Viable fusion has been ten years away for the last 40 years.

Chaos Corner And at some point it will be attained. Whether it’s now or later, things will happen, we might move on from helium, humanity will adapt as it has always done.

Peter Hasenpfeffer Mate we did all of this in 70 years because our ancestors and those who came before us spent their life time in finding small parts of the picture, and now after millenniums we just pieced them together (not completely that is for the next generations).

yup

my dog would have attacked with a licking and jumping furry vengeance

GOOD BOY ACQUIRED

Good character. Wish they did more with him.

I'd kick that dog

Sam Costin Bah, studying is for noobs.

Relatable...

@@jaxusr235 noobs!

yo how did those tests go

@@vaioretto-chanjade5810wow, I just wanted to ask that

Helium leaks through anything. Y'know, dont want to have you be after 50 years like, oh it's empty.

Well, it won't spoil!

@@ragnkja I doubt that. The advantage of mining from the sun is that you can leverage the yottawatt nuclear fusion reactor at its core. At outer planets, you need to bring a power source with you.

hey, small cost

only hundreds of times what we could earn from it

(earn/save)

@@ragnkja Yes, if you want to employ the same mining method that you'd use on planets. That would not be very smart. As I've said, the crucial difference is that the sun also provides energy to fuel the mining process. By cleverly placing mirrors and solar-powered electromagnets, you can make the sun throw its material at you. Mirrors and electromagnets work as long as they don't melt. If you're smart about their placement, you don't need to cool anything.

Yep, just use it in greenhouses to turn water into tomatoes slightly quicker. And spill some into the ocean while we're at it :D

Laughs in America.

Get over yourself.

@@jeroenverschaeve3090 Water turns into tomatoes?

Nope, just stop all exploration and transportation and sell it to other countries like Brandon does.

Dude, you're totally right hahaha

With a hint of Mark Hoppus.

..and looks like Jack Black's father somehow.

salat thats what i was gonna say

Andy Richter with a cold

Thank you - I was trying to remember which chemical was the opposite of helium for inhaling.

You could also use Xenon as it is at least not a greenhouse gas

Yes xenon also works but its not as deep as hf

CO2 has the same effect right?

@@ieperen3039 definitely not xD

That would be hilarious

Inflate them the old-fashioned way: lungs.

:'

I love hydrogen filled party balloons, personally. Actually not joking, I've done it before lmao

Me too, but because of plastic in nature.

@@revenevan11 *HINDENBURG WANTS TO KNOW YOUR LOCATION*

Sucking the juice out of a huge marachino cherry?

Licking a gigantic gobstopper?

stop kinkshaming

Cloud [2512] Kinkshaming _is_ my kink

Under rated

There's also the confusion with the National Helium Reserve, shown here, which sounds like it's all the helium in the US, but it's actually just the helium owned by the government, which doesn't want to be stockpiling helium and has been trying to wind down the program for 23 years, and accounts for none of the resources that could be extracted. But there was actually a point where it looked like selling off all the helium they were trying to get rid of might drive all the companies that extract helium out of business, with the risk that the world would run out of helium in the sense that the world ran out of Twinkies in 2012, when the manufacturer went bankrupt and it took ten months of none being available before production got back underway.

Don't be, over the last year we're good.

Wasn't that a Lindsey Buckingham song a number of years ago?

Lies, Wyoming doesnt exist

@@Milesco Helium roooOHHHOHOHHOAHHHHd

and a Cadillac Ranch!

Tom Scott was so near you 😱

Greg Fakerson Then again, 75 years is a long time. If we’re still alive, we might have the technology to extract helium-3 from the Moon by then, where there are big deposits of it, and even more in Jupiter. Also, nuclear fusion produces a small amount of helium, so there’s that as well.

relative to human perception of time, we are still running out of helium; quite quickly. I didn't think this video was very helpful to sustainability concerns.

That's what they thought 15 years ago as well, when they pumped 100 years worth of Helium into the ground.

This is so American in thought. 75 years is the blink of an eye for an entire element on a planet. It's not a product we can make. How can people not be anxious about this?

@@davidmin3583 humans(mainly older ones) generally dont care if something is running out since they'll be dead long before it becomes a problem.

So no?

It's a definite maybe.

Sounds like Vsauce2

No. You can harvest it on sun

@@ttn_kk The sun actually needs it. But the moon has plenty of it underground so fair enough.

Right, and part of the issue is legislature after WWII that mandated selling all of the reserve of it before a certain upcoming date iirc. This flooded the market and lead to our current wastefulness in some ways. Despite the fact that we're not as urgently running out as the media makes it seem, we still are acting as though it's not a valuable and non-renewable resource, which we do still need to change asap. It's worth it even just to maintain the current cheap helium prices in order to keep up the pace of scientific progress! A lot of equipment needs helium for cooling nowadays, and as Tom said, as the price of it fluctuates some labs aren't able to complete their research.

There was a newish find of additional helium. I think under a seabed location.Should still ban Helium balloons and canister, nobody recycles the damm things for the cylinders and the plastic foil is an environmental disaster. I had 22 birthdays and was never felt deprived not to have some foil baloon

Helium is a noble gas so it doesn't react with anything

Hydrogen is extremely flammable and reactive though. Having cannisters of them lying around and giving them to kids is just asking for trouble.

spoj while I realize most Americans are probably more familiar with therms than BTU, I was hoping that at least one or the other of BTU or megawatt hours would be familiar. It’s also (roughly) equivalent to about 5,000 gallons of gasoline (20,000 liters of petrol 😉).

The only unit of energy you used that had any meaning to me was megawatt-hours.

SHALALALALALALALA DAH DAH

That music video has not aged well.

@@danieldeburgh8437 don't remind us...

Route 66

Are you perchance a fellow fan of the Grey?

epic cgpgrey moment

@@gabrielfraser2109 Tim confirmed.

(pretends to know what those words mean)

@@stiimuli when someone says words enough they loose meaning

AE Sam is a riot.

GET A LOAD OF THAT DOG

squirrel!

Ok boomer

OK Boomer is such a lame insult

@@tonyhussey3610 Ok boomer 😛

That's deep bro

I think it already has.

Temm We already did. IPv6 is a big deal, but we're okay for now with NATs.

RIPE NCC just allocated their last /22 this morning, so yes.

... you mean is it "still" running out? wasn't that a big deal some years ago? or is it not a big deal now, because they took care of it? (same as y2k)

@@sirapple589 Ripe is the body that manages IP addresses, a /22 network is 1024 addresses. Companies get allocated blocks at a time, and if they've already been given their allowance, they have to pay a massive premium, which is understandable.

That might be your brain crashing. this one facility was built to last 100 years, but increased usage within the past 15 years drained it faster. While overall in the us, at our current rate of helium usage, we have 100 years worth remaining. You are the weakest link, goodbye.

I would pay to see that.

if tom was 20 years younger

You guys haven't seen his prank video (From the "not the future, but a future series")?

Or just use your lungs.

@@skunkfac3 you know air has the same buoyancy as air

Better keep your balloons away from the birthday candles in that case.

It is my understanding that weather balloons are filled with hydrogen unless there is some reason to fill them with helium instead.

Michael Gutterman the way us old times filled balloons before this new fangled helium. Balloons are fun even if they fall to the floor.

Also where is the uranium, Lithium and anything else that is needed.

Anarchy Antz Lithium isn’t that scarce, though. Cobalt is a bigger problem.

@@GRBtutorials With the massive increase in usage for batteries it has of course a finite supply but with the work by its creator John B. Goodenough on a new idea for a glass sodium battery that is more efficient, longer lasting and easier to recharge hopefully they will come into usage before the lithium becomes like helium. And yes the Cobalt issue is a bit of a problem.

@Anarchy Antz- fkn hell u wrote an essay 😂

Radioactive elements? Canada and the Congo. Which is a part of why the Congo is so politically unstable (a small part).

Welcome to the world of capitalism. Where $ is above all important.

What makes you think the government would preserve it?

@@azam148 because there is an incentive to preserving it for the purposes mentioned in the video unless of course the politicians are bought out by the private sector, but as long as we can keep the corporations away from the resource we can preserve it and with Bernie Sanders having a big chance of becoming the next president it's gonna be hard for companies to get their hands on it

bucketslash11 big government can be just as evil as big corporations if not more, look at what is happening in Venezuela. Americans need faith and reason, with free market capitalism. Not Socialist bs.

That's just in Wyoming alone