And unlike hydrogen, its lighter and more abundant neighbor on the periodic table, it doesn’t go boom at the slightest provocation. It has the lowest boiling point and freezing point of any other known substance. Because it is the smallest and the second-lightest element, it’s a master escape artist, slipping out of whatever container it’s in, even our atmosphere. Helium is abundant-the second-most-abundant element in the universe-but on Earth it is rare. The team wasn’t after gold or crude oil or natural gas they were looking for helium, a noble gas being released in huge quantities by the ancient granitic rock beneath them. It was July 2021, the beginning of the drill team’s second month in the Rukwa Basin, a sparsely populated agricultural plain nearly the size of Fiji. Hazem Trigui, a scientist who worked the night shift, watched from the smoking area, puffing on a cigarette. While two men scrutinized the rig’s progress on a set of dials, the others gathered lengths of stainless steel pipe from a nearby storage trailer. For three weeks, the drill had been drudging through layers of thick, gloopy clay, but now, at a depth of 1,800 feet, it had found an expanse of porous red sandstone and was picking up speed. Next to them was the reason they’d flown in from around the world: their drill rig, a 35-ton, 50-foot-high mast that pierced the sky. They wore white helmets and yellow, oil-smudged overalls, giving the impression of melting popsicles in the night’s dry heat. Deep within the grasslands of southwestern Tanzania, seven men were gathered on a gravel patch the size of a tennis court.
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