So, have you ever wonderd if an internet doomsday will ever happen well this peice will anwnser all your questions. B Madjaros
explores the possibility of an internet doomsday.
You might have heard a while back of a large sunspot that might have cut down parts of the internet. You might have heard that eventually the Earth’s magnetic field will reverse, destroying the internet. But the sunspot won’t get rid of the internet completely, and the magnetic field reversing will happen in a long time, and by that time [how far in the future] we won’t need the internet.
However, this threat is quite real and might happen in your great grandchildrens’ lifetime. In roughly 100-200 years (scientists’ estimate), we will run out of helium. Yes, helium. That gas that makes balloons float and your voice go squeaky. But not only that, it can be supercooled to liquid and used to cool down other systems like a cold blood system.
Helium is used for MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) which takes detailed pictures of the inside of the body and helps show the inside of the body. But it also reveals strokes, sclerosis and even cancer. Without helium, we won’t have MRI.
‘But I thought this was an internet apocalypse’ I hear you cry… thinking you ‘got clickbaited’. Well, liquid helium is also used to make sure that the fibre optics which the internet relies upon don’t break and are cold enough to work.
At the moment, some countries are making helium but not enough. And every year, 12.5% of helium is lost. Which is a problem if you want to continue watching youtube and TikTok. If the internet collapses, would society even survive?
Unfortunately while helium cannot be produced, countries are finding natural gas reserves and separating the helium in them. However, we hope to find a solution to make this wondrous gas.
A while back I made a piece on nuclear fusion being a good source of energy, but this is very much future tech. Through the power of science, a byproduct of nuclear fusion hydrogen atoms to make helium. So the internet should be safe.
Since the chamber where fusion takes place is empty and is airtight, the helium would be trapped in there, just begging to be harvested. But when will this happen and how efficient is it?
Well, to tell the truth, the amount of hydrogen in nuclear fusion isn’t huge. Only a few grams are used per attempt. However, because this is a gas normally, the density is extremely low making 3 grams of hydrogen 365 cubic metres of helium gas. Out of the 40 million cubic metres of helium used each year.
So while it does produce helium, you would have to run a nuclear fusion chamber 101 thousand times to equal roughly the amount taken in a year. The only easy option would be to make nuclear fusion give more output energy. Then they would make larger nuclear fusion chambers, to get infinite energy and to extract more renewable helium.
So the conclusion to this is that you probably won’t have anything to worry about as nuclear fusion is coming along quite nicely and produces helium. So nuclear fusion will solve the energy crisis with clean, almost inexhaustible energy instead of having to mine for it. That’s the best bet for making sure the internet doesn't collapse.
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