[Thor]

We need to get our butts in gear before we run out of helium!

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithab..._so_scarce.php

Helium! So if you get an ore of the right type of radioactive element, and you wait millions and millions (or even billions) of years, you make a giant underground store of helium!

So the good news is that these underground stores exist, so we have a supply of Helium for all of our scientific (and non-scientific) purposes. But the bad news? When we use it up, we'll have to wait million of years for it to build back up, or figure out some non-prohibitively expensive way to recover it from the atmosphere. (It's so expensive that many are thinking of mining the Moon when we're out of it on Earth!)

I'm all for environmentalism and conservation, but even if you aren't, running out of Helium poses a serious problem for the continuing advancement of science and technology. Helium on Earth is scarce. It took millions of years to make the stores we have now, and once they're gone, they'll be gone for thousands of generations.

So be careful with the precious things you have, and treat them like the precious things they are, even if others don't. Because some of them -- like Helium -- are truly irreplaceable.