[AndrewDucker]

Why would we run out of Ga?

[mikkupikku]

There's a component of modern culture that trains and expects people to be extremely pessimistic about long term human development. It results in situations above, where without any further information people just assume by default that were going to run out of a thing and are on some collision course with not just a disaster, but every single conceivable one.

(Gallium is a byproduct of aluminum production. We aren't going to run out.)

[threetonesun]

My understanding of most elements is if we want more it’s either pretty easy to make from something else we have a lot of, or we need to redo the Big Bang, the latter being, in my opinion, a bit of a disaster scenario.

[nkrisc]

Even synthesizing helium is prohibitively expensive. Unless you want whatever heavy decay products we have from nuclear waste, synthesizing elements at industrial scale probably isn’t happening.

Unless by “make from something” else you mean extract the element from existing chemical compounds found in Earth, in which case we’re still just using existing deposits on Earth.

[bananaflag]

On the other hand, it is possible to run out of a metal when all of it is either somewhere in some device or scattered among landfills (i.e. not concentrated in a place like a mine).

[margalabargala]

It's a byproduct of aluminum production.

The earth's crust is 8% aluminum.

We will have bigger problems before hitting this one.

[adrian_b]

That is true, but gallium is present in the aluminum and zinc ores only in minute quantities.

We will not remain without gallium, but it is impossible to scale up the gallium production to a higher level than provided by the current productions of aluminum and zinc.

So there is a maximum level of gallium that can be used per year and it would not be possible to increase the production of blue and white LEDs and of power transistors above that level.

Fortunately, the amount of gallium used per device is very small, so it is not likely that we will hit that level soon. A much more serious problem is the associated consumption of indium, for which the resources are much less.

[ta9000]

Thanks for providing a real answer.

[nkrisc]

That’s still not running out. It’s still there, just more effort to get.

[card_zero]

"At 10 parts per quadrillion, the Earth's oceans would hold 15,000 tonnes of gold", says the Wikipedia page on gold.

I'm inclined to think we've lost that gold.

[nkrisc]

Practically speaking, sure. It's obviously not cost-effective to extract it. But it's there if someone can get it. I don't expect anyone to be extracting gold from ocean water, but there are other source of other elements that may not be cost-effective now but could be in the future or may simply become necessary despite the cost.

[PowerElectronix]

Effort high enough to consider that material lost to any practical purpose like a tv.

[swiftcoder]

Cost scales with refinement effort, so it just results in more expensive TVs. That said, pretty sure we'll have drowned the planet in landfilled TVs long before this becomes a serious issue

[nkrisc]

If prices of certain metals were high enough I bet people would stop throwing out TVs and dig up old ones from the dump.

[pyrale]

> On the other hand, it is possible to run out of a metal when all of it is either somewhere in some device or scattered among landfills

The metal isn't going to disappear, but it won't be concentrated enough to be as easily retrievable.

[pwndByDeath]

Its concentrated in a place like a landfill that already has access for large vehicles.