(CBC) Here's something to celebrate with a big, bright bunch of helium party balloons: scientists believe they have discovered a huge new helium deposit — and the technique they used to find it could put an end to the global helium shortage.
You may be most familiar with helium as the lighter-than-air gas that makes balloons float on the end of a string and makes your voice sound squeaky after you breathe it in, but it has a huge range of more serious and important uses for airships, scuba diving tanks, MRI scanners, welding, industrial leak detection and even in the Large Hadron Collider.
Worldwide helium supplies have been running out, and Nobel prize-winning physicist Robert Richardson estimated in 2010 that they could be tapped out by 2035 or 2040.