Cold Facts Digital – The go-to place for Cryogenics and Superconductivity

Cryogenic Technique Reveals Fraudulent Food and Drugs

Engineers from the University of California, Riverside have developed "chronoprinting," a new technique that can detect fake drugs and food using videos recorded while samples undergo alterations. The technology requires only a few relatively inexpensive pieces of equipment, free software to accurately distinguish pure from inferior food or medicine and...

NASA’s JPL Seeking Applicants for First Space Accelerator

NASA's first aerospace accelerator program will select 10 startup companies to take part in a three-month pilot program to develop new technologies for space. Applications will be accepted through April 7. Selected teams will develop concepts and business plans over a three-month period and then pitch their results to the...

TRIUMF Receives Historic Canadian Investment

The Government of Canada has announced a five year and $292.7M investment supporting laboratory operations at TRIUMF (CSA CSM). The donation comes in response to TRIUMF's recently published Five-Year Plan 2020-2025 and represents the country's largest single investment there to date.

Fermilab Breaks Ground on PIP-II

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (CSA CSM) has officially broken ground on a major new particle accelerator project that will power cutting-edge physics experiments for many decades to come. When complete, PIP-II will become the heart of the laboratory’s accelerator complex, vastly improving what is already the world’s most powerful particle...

SNOLAB Confirms Positive First Year of Dark Matter Research

Researchers at the underground SNOLAB in Ontario, Canada, operate its DEAP-3600 experiment and have released results from the team's first year collecting data on dark matter, confirming that the sensitive detector is working as anticipated.

Flow of Time Reversed on Quantum Computer

An international science team reports that it has successfully returned a computer briefly to the past. Such a result suggests new paths for exploring the backward flow of time in quantum systems and also opens the possibility for quantum computer program testing and error correction. Argonne National Laboratory (CSA CSM)...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Dewar

A dewar is a type of cryostat named after Sir James Dewar, the researcher who first developed the concept of a vacuum insulated container with silvered walls to reflect thermal radiation. Dewar was the first to liquefy hydrogen, and he created the device to store his discovery. The thermos bottle...

Stirling and Gifford-McMahon Cryocoolers

Stirling and Gifford-McMahon (GM) cryocoolers are two of the most commonly used cryocoolers in cryogenics. Both devices have a significant industrial base and operate at a wide range of temperatures and capacities. The thermodynamic cycles for both of these cryocoolers are quite similar. The Stirling cycle consists of a compressor,...

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

A significant commercial application of cryogenics is the liquefaction, transport and storage of natural gas. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is generally 95 percent methane with a few percent ethane and much lower concentrations of propane and butane. LNG liquefies at 111.6 K. Unlike many applications of cryogenics, the motivation for...

Latest in Cryo Central

Magnets

From “Superconductivity: Present and Future Applications” by the Coalition for the Commercial Application of Superconductors. Particle physics uses accelerators to recreate the conditions of the early universe in an attempt to piece together the complex puzzle of how we got to where we are today. These huge machines are used...

Energy Storage

From “Superconductivity: Present and Future Applications” by the Coalition for the Commercial Application of Superconductors. With power lines increasingly congested and prone to instability, strategic injection of brief bursts of real power can play a crucial role in maintaining grid reliability. Small-scale Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) systems, based on...

Astronomy

ASTRONOMY IN SPACE by Peter V. Mason, retired, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Visiting Associate, California Institute of Technology. Pmason@alumni.caltech.edu In thinking about the reasons to perform astronomy in space, we first consider the effect of the earth’s atmosphere. On a scale of decreasing energy, gamma rays, cosmic rays, X-rays and...

Cryocoolers

What is a Cryocooler? A mechanism that can extract heat from an object (cooler) and by doing so draw its temperature down below approximately 150 Kelvin (cryo). — (Courtesy Dr. Willy Gully) What is the difference between a Cryocooler and a Cryostat? A cryostat is any device designed to maintain...

Latest in Ask the Experts