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Resurrected Detector Will Hunt for Some of the Strangest Particles in the Universe

Brought from Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory two years ago, ICARUS—an outdated acronym for Imaging Cosmic And Rare Underground Signals—will soon start a second life seeking perhaps the strangest particles physicists have dreamed up, oddballs called sterile neutrinos. Icarus will resume the neutrino hunt at Fermilab. If they exist, sterile...

Aerogel Could Be a Key Building Material for Mars

NASA scientists are exploring how aerogel, a translucent, Styrofoam-like material, could be used as a building material on Mars. Aerogel retains heat; structures built with it could raise temperatures enough to melt water ice on the Martian surface.

North Dakota Cattle Ranchers Now Have an Alternative to Hot Branding

Under North Dakota House Bill 1166, freeze branding became a legal method for ranchers to show ownership of cattle, according the North Dakota Stockmen’s Association. Freeze branding uses dry ice or liquid nitrogen to cool a branding iron, which is then pressed into an animal’s hide to mark it for...

CERN Successfully Tests Cooler Way to Transport Electricity

A 60-meter-long line has been developed for CERN’s future accelerator, the High-Luminosity LHC, which is due to come into operation in 2026. Tests began last year and the line has transported 40,000 amps, 20 times more than what is possible at room temperature with ordinary copper cables of a similar...

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Joule-Thomson Effect

The Joule-Thomson (JT) effect is a thermodynamic process that occurs when a fluid expands from high pressure to low pressure at constant enthalpy (an isenthalpic process). Such a process can be approximated in the real world by expanding a fluid from high pressure to low pressure across a valve. Under...

Current Leads

One of the challenges of using superconducting magnets is the connection of the magnet to a room temperature power supply. This is accomplished via current leads. The trick is that current leads should ideally have a low heat leak, since they connect room temperature to cryogenic temperature, while at the...

Multilayer Insulation

Multilayer insulation (also referred to as superinsulation) is a key component in the reduction of heat leak to cryogenic systems due to thermal radiation. MLI consists of a series of uncooled reflective surfaces placed in the vacuum space between two surfaces, one warmer than the other. Generally speaking, for ideal...

Primary Standards

Elie K. Track Hypres, Inc. elie@hypres.com http://www.hypres.com/ Primary standards involve the exact definition and realization of units of measurement for various quantities, time, length, mass, voltage, resistance, current, etc. International agreements based on the latest scientific knowledge define those units, and their realizations vary depending on the unit itself. For...

Shrink Fitting

Robin A. Rhodes Cryogenic Institute of New England, Inc. rrhodes@nitrofreeze.com Shrink fitting, (or “compression fitting” as it is sometimes called), is a method used to insert a pin or bushing into a housing or other assembly requiring an extremely tight tolerance fit. It can be used as an alternative to...

Telecommunications

From the Winter 2004 issue of Cold Facts magazine The recent M-Calc IV — 4th Industry Assessment workshop discussing military and commercial applications for low-cost cryocoolers, held in November in San Diego, highlighted progress being made in cryogenics as applied in telecommunications. The reliability and long lifetime of projects now...

Wind Tunnels

Dr. Robert Kilgore The development of the cryogenic wind tunnel is one of many significant breakthroughs in both cryogenics and wind-tunnel technology made during the past millennium. Interest in the development of high-speed commercial and military aircraft resulted in a review of problems of flow simulation in transonic wind tunnels...

An Issue of Pressure and Flow Rate in a Supply Tank

Please help solve this problem: A supply tank requires a vaporizer to generate sufficient pressure to pump stored fluid up into a vehicle or tank. The available head is limited as the tank level falls and it is important to minimize the system pressure drop to maintain the desired flow...

Using MLI on VJ Line Joints or Cryo Storage Tanks

When installing Multi Layer Insulation (MLI) blankets on VJ line joints or cryo storage tanks should they be wrapped and tied down tight or loose? These are usually pre-cut to size. Also should they have an access hole at the point of where the molecular sieve is installed to help...