The Other Strategic Reserve

While digging down the Thomas Gold rabbit hole, we found our attention diverted to a puzzling series of events unfolding in the helium market that is as surprising as it is troubling. It is a story of an important and militarily sensitive commodity that almost everybody takes for granted, a decades-old piece of obscure legislation that is slowly dr... See more

non-reactivity is a rare and exceptional attribute that is useful across the economy. Helium doesn’t even interact with itself in any meaningful way and must be cooled to -269°C (just four degrees above absolute zero)

In 1925, Congress passed a law creating the Federal Helium Reserve (FHR), a storage facility that once held over a billion cubic meters of it. Initially created to ensure supplies for airships, the reserve took on heightened importance after World War II, when helium’s utility in rocketry became apparent. For decades, the federal government’s infra... See more

According to Gold, perhaps the best evidence for the abiotic origin of oil is the strong association of helium with hydrocarbons. Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe and is formed from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium.

Thomas Gold was a professor of astrophysics at Cornell University and one of the most interesting scientists of the 20th century. He had a notable penchant for diving into completely new fields and developing hypotheses utterly at odds with the scientific consensus of the day. His many achievements include correcting the understanding of how the hu... See more

This so-called “abiotic” hypothesis of oil was first developed by Russian scientists decades before Gold’s formulated his version, something he later learned of and took great pains to disclose.