Sophia Hayes

a site, a lab, a facility, helping another facility that's just about to run out by perhaps transporting some of their helium to the other site in a way that would violate their contract, but is done so in secret.

And sometimes there's a cover story like, oh, you know, we left the container for helium is called a dewar, D-E-W-A-R.

So, you know, there's a dewar out on the loading dock and magically it disappeared and then returned, you know, empty.

It must have been leaky, you know, so there are some cover stories at times.

And we helium users tend to try to take care of each other, truly.

Anything that floats higher than air, you have to grab it quickly before it floats away, of course.

And so in order to keep it, you really need a closed cycle system.

If you think about something like the radiator in your car, that circulates cooling liquid all around the engine.

And it starts out in a reservoir, circles around to absorb the heat of the engine, and then it goes back into the reservoir.

So helium can be treated the same way, but it requires everything to be leak-tight.

And so it requires really careful engineering and also very good workmanship.

But we are capable of doing this, and there are commercial instruments that have that kind of recycling.

The magic of helium and why it inspires wonder in us is that, can you imagine being the first person to see this thing, to contain it and allow an object to float up into the air?

And it makes us engage as human beings in this really amazing element.

And so I think instead of having a bouquet of balloons, a single balloon is magical.

And to really think about each balloon that we release and understand that that represents

A billion years in that balloon of radioactive decay of uranium and such.

And so really to think of it as a precious commodity.