Shoot for the Moon: Its Surface Contains a Pot of Gold
Here's a riddle: What do the Moon, nuclear weapons, clean energy of the future, terrorism, and lung disease all have in common?
One goal of India's upcoming space probe is to locate deposits of helium-3 that are worth trillions of dollars.
The answer is helium-3, a gas that's extremely rare on Earth but 100 million times more abundant on the Moon. This past October, the Lockheed Martin corporation announced a concept for a lunar landing craft that may return humans to the Moon in the coming decade, and yesterday China successfully landed the Change-4 probe on the far side of the Moon. Landing inside the Moon's deepest crater, the Chinese achieved a first in space exploration history.
Meanwhile, later this month, India's Chandrayaan-2 space probe will also land on the lunar surface. One of its goals is to locate deposits of helium-3 that are worth trillions of dollars, because it could be a fuel for nuclear fusion energy to generate electricity or propel a rocket.
The standard way that nuclear engineers are trying to achieve sustainable fusion uses fuels that are more plentiful on Earth: deuterium and tritium. But MIT researchers have found that adding small amounts of helium-3 to the mix could make it much more efficient, and thus a viable energy source much sooner that once thought.
Even if fusion is proven practical tomorrow, any kind of nuclear energy involves long waits for power plant construction measured in decades. However, mining helium-3 could be useful now, because of its non-energy applications. A major one is its ability to detect neutrons coming from plutonium that could be used in terrorist attacks. Here's how it works: a small amount of helium-3 is contained within a forensic instrument. When a neutron hits an atom of helium-3, the reaction produces tritium, a proton, and an electrical charge, alerting investigators to the possibility that plutonium is nearby.
Ironically, as global concern about a potential for hidden nuclear material increased in the early 2000s, so did the supply of helium-3 on Earth. That's because helium-3 comes from the decay of tritium, used in thermonuclear warheads (H-bombs). Thousands of such weapons have been dismantled from U.S. and Russian arsenals, making helium-3 available for plutonium detection, research, and other applications--including in the world of healthcare.
Helium-3 can help doctors diagnose lung diseases, since it enables imaging of the lungs in real time.
Helium-3 dramatically improves the ability of doctors to image the lungs in a range of diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema, cystic fibrosis, and bronchopulmonary dysplasia, which happens particularly in premature infants. Specifically, helium-3 is useful in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a procedure that creates images from within the body for diagnostic purposes.
But while a standard MRI allows doctors to visualize parts of the body like the heart or brain, it's useless for seeing the lungs. Because lungs are filled with air, which is much less dense than water or fat, effectively no signals are produced that would enable imaging.
To compensate for this problem, a patient can inhale gas that is hyperpolarized –meaning enhanced with special procedures so that the magnetic resonance signals from the lungs are finally readable. This gas is safe to breathe when mixed with enough oxygen to support life. Helium-3 is one such gas that can be hyperpolarized; since it produces such a strong signal, the MRI can literally see the air inside the lungs and in all of the airways, revealing intricate details of the bronchopulmonary tree. And it can do this in real time
The capability to show anatomic details of the lungs and airways, and the ability to display functional imaging as a patient breathes, makes helium-3 MRI far better than the standard method of testing lung function. Called spirometry, this method tells physicians how the lungs function overall, but does not home in on particular areas that may be causing a problem. Plus, spirometry requires patients to follow instructions and hold their breath, so it is not great for testing young children with pulmonary disease.
In recent years, the cost of helium-3 on Earth has skyrocketed.
Over the past several years, researchers have been developing MRI for lung testing using other hyperpolarized gases. The main alternative to helium-3 is xenon-129. Over the years, researchers have learned to overcome certain disadvantages of the latter, such as its potential to put patients to sleep. Since helium-3 provides the strongest signal, though, it is still the best gas for MRI studies in many lung conditions.
But the supply of helium-3 on Earth has been decreasing in recent years, due to the declining rate of dismantling of warheads, just as the Department of Homeland Security has required more and more of the gas for neutron detection. As a result, the cost of the gas has skyrocketed. Less is available now for medical uses – unless, of course, we begin mining it on the moon.
The question is: Are the benefits worth the 239,000-mile trip?
Therapies for Healthy Aging with Dr. Alexandra Bause
My guest today is Dr. Alexandra Bause, a biologist who has dedicated her career to advancing health, medicine and healthier human lifespans. Dr. Bause co-founded a company called Apollo Health Ventures in 2017. Currently a venture partner at Apollo, she's immersed in the discoveries underway in Apollo’s Venture Lab while the company focuses on assembling a team of investors to support progress. Dr. Bause and Apollo Health Ventures say that biotech is at “an inflection point” and is set to become a driver of important change and economic value.
Previously, Dr. Bause worked at the Boston Consulting Group in its healthcare practice specializing in biopharma strategy, among other priorities
She did her PhD studies at Harvard Medical School focusing on molecular mechanisms that contribute to cellular aging, and she’s also a trained pharmacist
In the episode, we talk about the present and future of therapeutics that could increase people’s spans of health, the benefits of certain lifestyle practice, the best use of electronic wearables for these purposes, and much more.
Dr. Bause is at the forefront of developing interventions that target the aging process with the aim of ensuring that all of us can have healthier, more productive lifespans.
This man spent over 70 years in an iron lung. What he was able to accomplish is amazing.
It’s a sight we don’t normally see these days: A man lying prone in a big, metal tube with his head sticking out of one end. But it wasn’t so long ago that this sight was unfortunately much more common.
In the first half of the 20th century, tens of thousands of people each year were infected by polio—a highly contagious virus that attacks nerves in the spinal cord and brainstem. Many people survived polio, but a small percentage of people who did were left permanently paralyzed from the virus, requiring support to help them breathe. This support, known as an “iron lung,” manually pulled oxygen in and out of a person’s lungs by changing the pressure inside the machine.
Paul Alexander was one of several thousand who were infected and paralyzed by polio in 1952. That year, a polio epidemic swept the United States, forcing businesses to close and polio wards in hospitals all over the country to fill up with sick children. When Paul caught polio in the summer of 1952, doctors urged his parents to let him rest and recover at home, since the hospital in his home suburb of Dallas, Texas was already overrun with polio patients.
Paul rested in bed for a few days with aching limbs and a fever. But his condition quickly got worse. Within a week, Paul could no longer speak or swallow, and his parents rushed him to the local hospital where the doctors performed an emergency procedure to help him breathe. Paul woke from the surgery three days later, and found himself unable to move and lying inside an iron lung in the polio ward, surrounded by rows of other paralyzed children.
Hospitals were commonly filled with polio patients who had been paralyzed by the virus before a vaccine became widely available in 1955. Associated Press
Paul struggled inside the polio ward for the next 18 months, bored and restless and needing to hold his breath when the nurses opened the iron lung to help him bathe. The doctors on the ward frequently told his parents that Paul was going to die.But against all odds, Paul lived. And with help from a physical therapist, Paul was able to thrive—sometimes for small periods outside the iron lung.
The way Paul did this was to practice glossopharyngeal breathing (or as Paul called it, “frog breathing”), where he would trap air in his mouth and force it down his throat and into his lungs by flattening his tongue. This breathing technique, taught to him by his physical therapist, would allow Paul to leave the iron lung for increasing periods of time.
With help from his iron lung (and for small periods of time without it), Paul managed to live a full, happy, and sometimes record-breaking life. At 21, Paul became the first person in Dallas, Texas to graduate high school without attending class in person, owing his success to memorization rather than taking notes. After high school, Paul received a scholarship to Southern Methodist University and pursued his dream of becoming a trial lawyer and successfully represented clients in court.
Paul Alexander, pictured here in his early 20s, mastered a type of breathing technique that allowed him to spend short amounts of time outside his iron lung. Paul Alexander
Paul practiced law in North Texas for more than 30 years, using a modified wheelchair that held his body upright. During his career, Paul even represented members of the biker gang Hells Angels—and became so close with them he was named an honorary member.Throughout his long life, Paul was also able to fly on a plane, visit the beach, adopt a dog, fall in love, and write a memoir using a plastic stick to tap out a draft on a keyboard. In recent years, Paul joined TikTok and became a viral sensation with more than 330,000 followers. In one of his first videos, Paul advocated for vaccination and warned against another polio epidemic.
Paul was reportedly hospitalized with COVID-19 at the end of February and died on March 11th, 2024. He currently holds the Guiness World Record for longest survival inside an iron lung—71 years.
Polio thankfully no longer circulates in the United States, or in most of the world, thanks to vaccines. But Paul continues to serve as a reminder of the importance of vaccination—and the power of the human spirit.
““I’ve got some big dreams. I’m not going to accept from anybody their limitations,” he said in a 2022 interview with CNN. “My life is incredible.”