I live near a business that has tank farms and piping for pressurized gases. They provide a lot of oxygen for health care use. If they can “manufacture” a gas, why can’t they make more helium?
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>If they can “manufacture” a gas, why can’t they make more helium?
They can’t. Businesses that “make” oxygen are just collecting it from the air, which is ~21% oxygen. They’re not *making* it, they’re just filtering it out of a mixture.
The atmosphere has essentially no helium in it, so that approach doesn’t work. It’s too light and rises up until it drifts away into space. Surprisingly, helium has to be mined from underground! It’s a product of radioactive decay, so sometimes when conditions are just right you happen to get some radioactive minerals and a gas-tight underground cavity nearby that can collect some helium over thousands of years as the radioactive stuff breaks down. Then we need to find these pockets, drill into them, and collect the lighter-than-air helium without losing it.
TLDR: Helium much scarcer than oxygen on Earth, harder to find, more expensive to access and store, and cannot be “made” in any practical manner.
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