And suddenly the mountaineering scene is discussing a noble gas that we all probably heard about in chemistry lessons at school. But most of us have forgotten all about it. Xenon is one of the rarest elements found on earth. Although it is in the air we breathe, the proportion of xenon is tiny: 87 billionths or 0.0000087 percent (I hope I didn’t make a mistake with the zeros).
If you want to extract xenon, this almost-nothing proportion has to be extracted from the air in a complex process. This makes the gas expensive. But it is also in demand. Xenon is used for light sources (such as car lamps), as a laser gas in the semiconductor industry, as a propulsion agent for satellites, in medicine as a high-tech anesthetic – and probably soon also in commercial eight-thousander mountaineering.
Continue reading “Xenon use on Everest short trip: “Trained doctor with appropriate equipment is absolutely essential””
