Is it true that the world will be out of helium soon?
954967
According to the news article that I read, there is a shortage of Helium because the manufacturing plants are off-line.  The shortage has nothing to do with the amount of Helium left to find.
660248
Stars "die" when they run out of hydrogen to turn into helium. Estimares of their life-expectancy are based on spectroscopic evidence of their current composition.
555359
No, because all of the materials used to make people are constantly being recycled.\n\nThe mass of the earth is increasing, however, because of the constant bombardment of the planet with cosmic dust and stuff.
913412
Not now.\nAlso, iron being at the nuclear energy low point, changing it to other elements takes power, rather than releasing it.
674952
No, I dont believe the world will end until our sun collapses. Of course, that says nothing about the human race, which may or may not be long since extinct by then. While our species and many others will vanish, there will always be life on earth to the end, even if it's just archaebacteria.
372306
Depends on how much helium you put into it, and how big your baloon is, and how and where you release it, and... it may well heep going up and up and up to the top of our atmosphere if you put enough in.
600664
By then most people will agree that mankind will not be around. That is not the pessimists but now the optimists too. The question is how will this eventual demise arise? That will determine what the state of of the Earth will be in 1000 years. If the 'War on Terror' ends in nuclear holocaust then the Earth will be a barren land much similar to Mars is today. If global warming catches up with us then we will be in the middle of another Ice Age.\nThe alternative is that we humans, against all odds, do survive. In that case we will be living in a civilisation that is either as close to total anarchy as we can get without destroying ourselves or we will be in totalitarian state of control. Either way the future was stolen from our hands a long long time ago.
497956
Nope! Not unless we bomb everyone, including ourselves...but I highly doubt we'll do that. According to studies, the only way that earth will truly blow up, is when it goes through its final stages. For example, turning into a red giant. I can't remember what stages we are in at the moment...but it won't happen for a long, LONG time.
84417
The Sun is currently about 5 billion years old, "burning" hydrogen by fusing hydrogen into helium. The fusion only works in the core, where the temperature and pressure is high enough.\n\nWhen the hydrogen is used up the Sun will begin to contract. Eventually the core will become hot enough that helium will start to fuse. During this time the outer layers of the Sun will expand. This is the Red Giant phase.\n\nFairly soon after this (astronomically speaking) the Sun will run out of helium. Again the sun will contract, but this time not enough to heat the core for helium to burn (helium burning happens in massive stars). \n\nAt this stage the Sun will continually contract, glowing fainter and fainter with energy derived from the collapse and not fusion, until the remnant Sun is compressed so much that it is about the size of the Moon. At the begining of this collapse more gas is lost from the outer layers of the Sun, forming what is known as a "Planetary Nebulae," a shell of gas that has nothing to do with planets.\n\nThe white dwarf stage is very, very long. The Sun will slowly fade until it is barely radiating and is a cold, bare "black dwarf."  The Sun will NOT turn into a black hole.\n\n\nSo the answer is:\n--The Sun is about 5 billion years old.\n--The Red Giant phase will occur in about 5 billion years\n--Sun as a White dwarf - starting about 5 billion from now, and ending about 10 or 15 billion years from now.\n--Sun as a cold, black dwarf - as long as the Sun doesn't crash into anything, this stage may last for hundreds of billions of years
876385
if you mean..." If the worlds oxygen ends what would happen?" then that is obvious. the worlds would slowly deteriorate\n\nLife would end
343545
It will NOT!\n\nIt'll 'die' by:\nIt starts to fuse helium to heavier elements. Thus, it'll swell up into a red giant (earth will be gone). \nThen, it'll suddenly shrink into a white dwarf.
431558
To the world (the planet)? Then it is probably that we're heading toward another ice age if that meteor doesn't hit us.\n\nTo the world (People)? Then it's probably the planet -- it will get us all in the end, earthquakes, floods, famines, plagues, disease, superbugs... we have the present vanity of thinking we have caused problems and so we can solve them -- that we have control or the upper hand. Nope, sorry. We don't, we could solve the global warming and then hey, throw a Nuclear War or die from antibiotic-resistant superbugs, Mad Cow disease or Bird Flu!\n\nTo the world (culture/history)?  Then the answer is digital communication -- vinyl is dead, magnetic tape lives forever but the machines are dead, CDs are rotting, formats change and we lose data -- will there be anything for future archaeologists to dig up?  For a communication age, I don;t see photos, letters or even music as surviving more than a generation.  All our libraries will vanish under a computer supervirus in 2020! Arrgh!
707999
No, there is no evidence to suggest that. Even if humans destroy themselves, the planet itself will still be here. Earth has another few billion years left.
646995
Not in the next 50 years.  Ever since we started using oil commentators have been saying it's about to run out.
176462
Suppose observers like Spamfighter are correct, let's see how we can explain the following.\nIf you take ice-core samples from various places around the planets ice-caps you can get trapped air that's hundreds of thousands of years old (650,000, more or less). And, sure enough, there does seem to be a pattern of hot-house gas increases and decreases. So for most of this time the earth has been gaining, and then losing these heating elements. \n\nSo far Spamguard & co.'s assertion seem OK. BUT, and this is a big BUT, something else was happening, and it was happening relatively recently. It turns out that since the beginning of the industrial revolution the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has come to be 27% GREATER THAN AT ANY OTHER TIME WITHIN THOSE 650,000 YEARS. Of course, if you're so inclined, you can say it's a "pure coincidence" and that there are other more "complicated" factors.
1168670
Isn't that kinda like asking what would happen if humans didn't depend on oxygen anymore?\n\nIt ain't gonna happen, so don't worry about it.
978481
Barring a nuclear winter or other catastrophic event, we'll still be around, polluting, smoking, and drinking.  Humans are pretty hardy creatures, and have lived through plagues, Ice Ages, etc.  While we are using our resources at an exponential rate, I do think this will necessitate some of the newer technologies already in the works.  We'll use fossil fuels until we can't any more, but there's always other forms of energy.  Right now, its too expense to implement mass change across the globe, but soon we won't have a choice, and I can't fathom that we as people (who have been around for hundreds of thousands of years) would suddenly fail to adapt.  That's what we were meant to do- to populate this planet.  \n\nSo no, unless a catastrophe of unheard-of magnitude strikes us, we'll still be around.  People for centuries have said the end times are upon us.  I'm still waiting....