We regret to report that William “Bill” Shields, co-founder of Janis Research Company and longtime friend of CSA, died July 13 at age 82, after an extended period of declining health.
Swirling dense metallic hydrogen dominates the interiors of Jupiter, Saturn and many extra-solar planets. Building precise models of these giant planets requires an accurate description of the transition of pressurized hydrogen into this metallic substance – a long-standing scientific challenge.
Boston Scientific recently announced acquisition of Cryterion Medical, Inc., a company developing a cryoablation platform to treat atrial fibrillation (AF), positioning it in the growing electrophysiology market.
The latest edition of the Review of Particle Physics, a resource for particle physicists, was published Aug. 17 in the American Physical Society’s Physical Review D journal, marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the international Particle Data Group (PDG) that produces the Review.
On Tuesday, Aug. 14, ICARUS moved into its new Fermilab home, a recently completed building that houses the large, 20-meter-long neutrino hunter. Filled with 760 tons of liquid argon, it is one of the largest detectors of its kind in the world. With this move, ICARUS now sits in the...
Investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Engineering in Medicine (MGH-CEM) have developed a simple method to maintain water and water-based solutions in a liquid state at temperatures far below the usual freezing point for greatly extended periods of time—a development that may someday enable safe, extended preservation of...
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...
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 (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...
by Nils Tellier, PE, President, EPSIM Corporation (CSA CSM) nils@epsim.us All illustrations courtesy EPSIM Corporation Background History of Air Separation and Liquefaction This section builds on a rich history of methods to develop deep refrigeration and cryogenic liquefaction during the 19th Century. You are encouraged to read Cryo Central’s History...
A Bose-Einstein condensate, first proposed in 1925 by Albert Einstein based on work done by Satyendra Nath Bose (the same Bose from whom the term boson is derived), is a super-cold state of matter in which almost all of the individual atoms have “condensed” down to the lowest possible quantum...
While it does not reach temperatures cold enough to be called cryogenic, carbon dioxide snow is at the heart of a new way of dealing with unwanted pests. It utilizes a quick freezing process that takes advantage of the properties of carbon dioxide snow and has a number of benefits...
The following 3 articles discuss the uses and procedures of various type of cryogenic finishing. 1) By Robin A. Rhodes, Cryogenic Institute of New England, Inc. rrhodes@nitrofreeze.com Cryogenic Deflashing is employed to remove undesired residual mold flash that remains on molded parts after they are removed or ejected from the...
I am writing a proposal to do some deep space simulations of mechanical vibrations at cryogenic temperatures. For the research, I will need to obtain a chamber that has a space of approximately 1700 cubic inches (or a 12in. cube) that also has an optical viewing window.