Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alice, and I don't really like the science
Speaker 1: editor at how stuff works dot com. Just Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: science writer for how stuff works dot com. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about helium, about the kind you find in those balloons,
Speaker 1: but the kind you find on the moon. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: So let's keep off our podcast today and give our
Speaker 1: listeners some fun moon facts. I've got one. Can I start? Yeah,
Speaker 1: go for it. Okay, where did the Moon come from?
Speaker 1: Outer space? Well? Yeah, kinda. So there's this theory, right,
Speaker 1: Scientists love theories, and this one is their favorite surrounding
Speaker 1: the Moon. It's called the ejected ring. Theory goes like this.
Speaker 1: A couple of billion years ago, there's this massive space collision.
Speaker 1: Two planets, one of which was Earth and one of
Speaker 1: which was this, uh this, one of that came barreling
Speaker 1: into our neighborhood. They collided, they are, and the resulting
Speaker 1: smash up. The remnants of the two planets mixed together.
Speaker 1: They formed an orbital ring and that eventually condensed into
Speaker 1: the Moon. Well here's another fact that stems right off
Speaker 1: of that it's Uh, the Moon and the Earth as
Speaker 1: we know today are in a gravitational relationship. The Moon
Speaker 1: is trapped in the Earth's gravitational field or it's around us.
Speaker 1: But the Moon's gravitational pull tugs on the oceans, which
Speaker 1: creates the tides, right, and actually that tug has been
Speaker 1: suggested as one source of energy. Um. So basically what
Speaker 1: we would do on a on Earth, we'd be we
Speaker 1: built these underwater turbines that would take advantage of this
Speaker 1: uh natural motion of the tides, and we'd um, we
Speaker 1: have these turbines and we generate some electricity from it. Basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen some designs that actually involve a bio biomimicry
Speaker 1: that involved like a basically a giant mechanical sharp tail. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the basic ideas that a nature came up
Speaker 1: with this, best will mimic this and use that to
Speaker 1: to collect the kinetic energy of the types. Right, It's
Speaker 1: pretty neat idea. But a couple of unknowns with this approach, like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, are barnacle is going to grow on the turbines? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do we do we need to put even more junk
Speaker 1: on the bottom of our oceans? I think not, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about helium three instead. Yeah, helium three. Uh,
Speaker 1: and this is basically normal helium as was in my
Speaker 1: lungs earlier, except there's a one missing neutron and that's
Speaker 1: a key difference. Yes, yeah, pretty key. When I asked
Speaker 1: for helium three downstairs in the little lobby store, they
Speaker 1: had none. They're all sold out because of Judy's fourty
Speaker 1: birthday party. Um that, and there's there's virtually none of it.
Speaker 1: There's very little of it on the on the Earth,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of it on the Moon, or
Speaker 1: at least much more. Yeah, okay, well, why well, helium
Speaker 1: three forms when cosmic rays bombard helium four, which is
Speaker 1: produced naturally through the fusion through fusion in the sun. Right,
Speaker 1: So the Sun's pumping this stuff out. Our gravitational field
Speaker 1: and our atmosphere repel the stuff from entering the Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: So what little of it there is on Earth has
Speaker 1: been here for just ages and ages, ancient stuff. And it's,
Speaker 1: like I said, this, very little of it. The Moon, however,
Speaker 1: no atmosphere to speak of. It's just up there collecting
Speaker 1: this stuff age after age. So you know, we reach
Speaker 1: a point where where we have you know, very little here,
Speaker 1: but just massive reserves on the Moon. Yeah, so there's
Speaker 1: like a mother load up there. Yeah, we're talking one
Speaker 1: million tons of it on the Moon. And to put
Speaker 1: that in perspective, they say that the amount of energy
Speaker 1: stored in that deposit is roughly ten times that stored
Speaker 1: in fossil fuels on Earth. Right, So helium three is
Speaker 1: awesome for nuclear fusion reactions. I mean, that's what we're
Speaker 1: really interested in. And what's more, it's it represents an
Speaker 1: improvement on nuclear fusion reactions that we've undertaken in the past.
Speaker 1: To remind everybody, nuclear fusion is the process where you
Speaker 1: take two elements, you combine them and it produces a
Speaker 1: new element and energy and the energy being key, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. It's the same reaction like Robert said,
Speaker 1: that fuels our sun and it's not fission, which is
Speaker 1: the splitting. Always confused those too, but fusion fuse vision
Speaker 1: split anyway. So when helium three is heated to high
Speaker 1: temperatures and you combine it with a little deterium and
Speaker 1: deuterium of course is an isotype of hydrogen right with
Speaker 1: it as a neutron next to its one proton. Do
Speaker 1: you get this huge, huge, huge reaction and the energy
Speaker 1: which is which is pretty much our energy dreams. This
Speaker 1: is the stuff of our energy dreams. This is the
Speaker 1: stuff that would make oil be gone and helium three
Speaker 1: rock on. You get nuclear fusion. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: what they're gunning for at the National Ignition Facility. But
Speaker 1: they just really haven't been able to generate a nuclear
Speaker 1: fusion reaction in a controlled fashion, in a safe fashion,
Speaker 1: or on a commercial scale fashion like they would with
Speaker 1: the helium three. Yeah. Like, um, theoretically you could. You
Speaker 1: could form the same reaction, a similar reaction with tritium,
Speaker 1: but one of the by products of that is a
Speaker 1: just a whole boatload of radiation. Yeah, so helium three
Speaker 1: tends to be cleaner and it doesn't seem to pose
Speaker 1: a danger to sunless radiation produced. Well, what don't they
Speaker 1: like about it? Though? Well, there is the whole fact
Speaker 1: that it's mostly on the moon. Like I said, that's
Speaker 1: what what small amounts we have on Earth is sufficient
Speaker 1: for tests and a horse and around in a laboratory,
Speaker 1: but not so much actually like gearing up for full
Speaker 1: on production. Uh. In speaking of production, we can make
Speaker 1: helium three, but we produce it as a byproduct of
Speaker 1: creating nuclear warheads, so that's not exactly an ideal situation either.
Speaker 1: And again it doesn't produce large quantities. And then there's
Speaker 1: a fact that we really haven't mastered the Moon and
Speaker 1: back journey quite yet from a you know, safety or
Speaker 1: efficiency perspective. I mean, people have been known to die
Speaker 1: on these trips, and efficiency wise, it's not clear that
Speaker 1: will be getting out more than what we put in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the thing. You have to be able
Speaker 1: to justify going to the Moon and bringing this stuff
Speaker 1: back and uh, and it's actually, uh, there's more involved.
Speaker 1: It's not just simply landing the vessel, getting out the
Speaker 1: shovel and throwing you know, some rocks into the into
Speaker 1: the lunar vehicle and returning. And incidentally, that's how we
Speaker 1: know that there is exactly the helium three in the
Speaker 1: moon is because what's his the astronaut Harrison Schmidt stuffed
Speaker 1: his pockets full of lunar rocks and then we got
Speaker 1: around to analyzing it and will and behold, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of helium three. It kind of makes it sound
Speaker 1: like you shoplifted them or something. But yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think you can shoplift from the Moon because it's the
Speaker 1: property of all mankind. We'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 1: We will get to that in a second. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: to to bring to bring it back from the Moon,
Speaker 1: first of all, to uh, to mine it, you'd have
Speaker 1: to create some pretty high temperature, so we're talking like
Speaker 1: six hundred degrees celsius to nine under degree celsius too,
Speaker 1: to extract it from the soil and remove some of
Speaker 1: the impurities. And then you're gonna have to further refine
Speaker 1: the stuff because it doesn't just come ready made, right,
Speaker 1: It comes in roughly thirteen parts per billion in the
Speaker 1: lunar soil. So there's a there would be a lengthy
Speaker 1: mining and refining process that would have to take place
Speaker 1: on the Moon. And I mean, what do we have
Speaker 1: up there right now? Why does it have to take
Speaker 1: place on the Moon. Well, because otherwise we've got to
Speaker 1: bring all that unrefined like moon rock. So it's a
Speaker 1: matter of space. It's a matter of space. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we build up I mean, we couldn't even build
Speaker 1: a space uplighted to the Moon. But I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's the only feasible way to go about
Speaker 1: it is to to refine it there and bring back
Speaker 1: the goods, you know. And of course up there on
Speaker 1: the moon right now, what we have a flag, a
Speaker 1: few you know, some chunks of lunar vehicles, center, golf
Speaker 1: ball or two. Yeah, because Alan Shepard hit a golf
Speaker 1: ball off of it. Proudest moments and human history. And
Speaker 1: then there's the other question of our fusion reactors really
Speaker 1: aren't quite up to the task yet, right Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: we're talking you know, theoretical stuff and and you know,
Speaker 1: early schematics and designs at this point, and U and
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna build, you know, try and build one of
Speaker 1: these things that we don't have the fuel to to
Speaker 1: run and make it, you know, earn it's keep. So
Speaker 1: the i mean, the helium three that does exist up
Speaker 1: there is, Oh, it's monumental in terms of money, in
Speaker 1: terms of the monetary value st value, high Street value
Speaker 1: for helium three, no doubt. And a lot of people
Speaker 1: are a lot of people want it? Who wants it? Everybody?
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously the United States is interested, NASA is
Speaker 1: expressed an interest in it. China has definitely expressed a
Speaker 1: very vocal interest. India, Russia, A couple of private corporations
Speaker 1: out there, I think are also in on the helium
Speaker 1: three race because we're talking about the future of energy
Speaker 1: production on the planet and as well as the possibilities
Speaker 1: for the further exploration of our our solar system because
Speaker 1: you know, you mind it up there on the moon,
Speaker 1: and the Moon is also um an ideal launching pad,
Speaker 1: an ideal base camp, if you will, for for further
Speaker 1: exploration right less of an escape velocity, etcetera. Yeah, NASA
Speaker 1: outlined its whole um. It's numerous, numerous. I think it
Speaker 1: has like two hundred lunar exploration objectives and this clearly
Speaker 1: helium three was one of them, as well as utilizing
Speaker 1: other lunar resources. There's a whole tab devoted to it
Speaker 1: and it's spreadsheet, and it could get pretty competitive up there.
Speaker 1: I mean, this could be we could be talking about
Speaker 1: the gold rushes of the nineteenth century only on the
Speaker 1: Moon and for helium three, the helium three rushes, the
Speaker 1: helium three rushes. Yeah, so they it's not really clear
Speaker 1: who owns the moon. So who owns the moon? Well,
Speaker 1: nobody really owns the moon per se, because the un says, so, oh, well,
Speaker 1: well that clears it up. No, no, but seriously, that's
Speaker 1: now there's this Moon treaty that they rode up in
Speaker 1: nine that essentially does say the moon is, uh, the
Speaker 1: moon and its related resources are the property of quote
Speaker 1: unquote the common heritage of mankind. And of course it's
Speaker 1: one thing to say that, you know then, or even now,
Speaker 1: when nobody's up there right now there, we're not exactly
Speaker 1: hitting the moon a lot, or or or have the
Speaker 1: wherewithal to mine and refine anything. So but once people
Speaker 1: do get up right, yeah, once the technology catches up
Speaker 1: with us, I could see this becoming much more repressing issue, right.
Speaker 1: And who's going to abide by the treaty? Right, It's
Speaker 1: not like some of the nations are that good at
Speaker 1: abiding by existing treaties now anyone, anyone? So when are
Speaker 1: we talking about Well, it depends depends when you're looking
Speaker 1: into the future. And then who's doing the the the imagining.
Speaker 1: Because I've read some articles where China was supposed to
Speaker 1: be up there right now. Maybe well maybe they are,
Speaker 1: they just have reported it yet maybe so in theory, yeah,
Speaker 1: China was planning to be up there already. Um, I've
Speaker 1: also heard yeah, and I think something and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of up in the air. So to
Speaker 1: wrap this up, so yeah, until any of this uh
Speaker 1: comes to fruition, we uh we have the whole title
Speaker 1: thing to fall back on. Yeah, we do. And I
Speaker 1: also think werewolves a big possibility because, as we all know,
Speaker 1: the full moon changes people who suffer from lecanthropy into wearawolves.
Speaker 1: And who's to say that that process doesn't give off
Speaker 1: a spare proton, right, no doubt, no doubt. I think
Speaker 1: we should look into that. Yeah, if you're not interested
Speaker 1: in the Wearable prospect or if you are interested in
Speaker 1: the Wearable Prospect or the moon or helium three, head
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