In case you couldn’t already tell by the increasing bills from your provider, our world is facing a shortage of a very common gas: Helium. Even though it’s the second most abundant element in the universe, it’s getting harder and hard to find here on Earth, and, according to Popular Mechanics*, by the year 2020, the federal reserve of helium that has crucial industrial applications for things like MRIs (it’s the only element we have that can keep the magnets cool enough at the right stability for the medical imaging technology to work) will be all but depleted.
