Helium Ballooning out of Yellowstone! Helium may be the second most abundant element in the universe

Helium Ballooning out of Yellowstone! Helium may be the second most abundant element in the universe (~24% of the mass of the universe!), but on Earth it’s extraordinarily rare (~ 8 parts per billion within the earth’s crust). Helium in our Earth is a product of the radioactive decay of minerals that contain uranium and thorium, mostly found in magmatic rocks of the deep crust. Helium tends to collect as other gasses collect: the helium we buy to blow up balloons is a by-product of natural gas production, some of which contains ~ 8% helium. So, what a wonderful miracle that suddenly a new source of helium has been discovered: the gasses of Yellowstone National Park’s geysers, hot springs and pools of bubbling muds and sulfurous waters – contain a huge amount of helium. Enough, so NPR reports, to fill a Goodyear blimp every week. The availability of the helium doesn’t mean that suddenly a lot of radioactive minerals below Yellowstone are working overtime to decay. The helium of Yellowstone has a high He3/He4 ratio, interpreted to mean that it has a source in the deep mantle. However, new research reported from the USGS demonstrates that the amount of helium in Yellowstone requires it to have accumulated in the subsurface there since Archean times – that is, more than 2.5 billion years ago. Since then, the subsurface appears to have been rather quiet, and helium simply did not escape. Why there is so much helium now is because of the recent (well, let’s say over the past two million years) metamorphism and deformation of the crustal rocks below Yellowstone induced by movement of the old crust over the super-volcano hotspot. Given all the activity of hydrothermal and volcanic gasses of Yellowstone, the helium is now finding an easy conduit for escape. For plenty of other reasons, one shouldn’t inhale the hot, sometimes poisonous gasses exuding from Yellowstone’s hot springs and geysers: but if you did (and survived), you might end up squeaking… Annie R Photo: M. Melford, courtesy National Geographic.http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/18/279246118/if-yellowstone-could-talk-it-might-squeak-blame-the-heliumhttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7488/full/nature12992.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/75719/where-is-helium-found/http://www.chemicool.com/elements/helium.html -- source link
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