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

New Dream Team Leading CERN

Fabiola Gianotti officially began her term as CERN's new—and first female—Director General on January 1, bringing with her a group CERN describes as a "new dream team." Gianotti earned her PhD in experimental particle physics from the University of Milan in 1989 and joined CERN as a researcher in 1994....

Generations of Tesla experts celebrate family reunion at TCC

Experts on superconducting radio frequency technologies (SRF) from all over the world came to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in December for the Tesla Technology Collaboration (TTC) meeting. Akira Yamamoto, Asian director of International Linear Collider (ILC), said the TCC reminded him of a family reunion where everything from technical...

CEC/ICMC 2015 published papers now online and open access

Papers submitted to the 2015 Cryogenic Engineering and International Cryogenic Materials Conferences (CEC-ICMC) are now online. The complete set is available in two volumes, one for each conference, on IOP Science.

Beam-Beam Compensation Scheme Doubles Proton-Proton Collision Rates at RHIC

Accelerator physicists at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have successfully implemented an innovative scheme for increasing proton collision rates at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), an accomplishment that should in turn produce more data for scientists to sift through to answer important nuclear physics questions,...

Maxwell’s demon as a self-contained, information-powered refrigerator

Scientists at Aalto University in Finland have created an autonomous Maxwell’s demon that makes it possible to analyze the microscopic changes in thermodynamics. The nano-scale device may also facilitate the design of future computers.

Scientists study new alloy that gets tough at low temperature

Just in time for the icy grip of winter: A team of researchers led by scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has identified several mechanisms that make a new, cold-loving material one of the toughest metallic alloys ever.

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Space Cryogenics

Space cryogenics is, somewhat obviously, the application of cryogenics to space exploration and science. The use of cryogenics in space optimizes the launching of vehicles, provides power and life support to spacecraft and is critical for many scientific observations.Space cryogenics has a number of challenges and has driven both pure...

Exergy

The science of thermodynamics plays a major role in cryogenics. It underlies the various refrigeration cycles, from Carnot to Brayton (Cold Facts Vol. 32 No. 2) and Joule-Thomson, is a fundamental part of the definition of terms such as coefficient of performance (Cold Facts Vol. 31 No. 1) and even...

Cryogenic Treatment

Cryogenic treatment is the process of cooling materials to cryogenic temperatures temporarily to improve their material properties at room temperature. This is distinct from cooling materials down to cryogenic temperatures to take advantage of phenomena such as superconductivity that only occur at cryogenic temperatures. Cryogenic treatment, sometimes also referred to...

Latest in Cryo Central

Cryogenic Electronics

Randall Kirschman, consulting physicist, Mountain View, California ExtElect@gmail.com Cryogenic electronics—the operation of electronic devices, circuits, and systems at cryogenic temperatures—has been a valuable technology for decades. Cryogenic electronics (also referred to as low-temperature electronics, or cold electronics) can be based on semiconductive devices, on superconductive devices, or on a combination...

Particle Physics: High Energy Physics

Cryogenics and High-Energy Physics 1. From symmetry magazine: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000627: Cryogenics is the study of how materials behave at temperatures near absolute zero. In high-energy particle accelerators, such frigid temperatures reduce the electrical resistance of wires in superconducting magnets, increasing the magnet strength and allowing faster particle acceleration. The same holds...

HTS Degaussing Systems

From the Spring 2009 issue of Cold Facts (Volume 25, Number 2): Thanks to a joint project by the US Navy and a number of industry partners, high temperature superconducting (HTS) technology is now at the heart of an advanced degaussing system aboard the USS Higgins at the naval station...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

From http://www.superconductors.org: An area where superconductors can perform a life-saving function is in the field of biomagnetism. Doctors need a non-invasive means of determining what’s going on inside the human body. By impinging a strong superconductor-derived magnetic field into the body, hydrogen atoms that exist in the body’s water and...

Latest in Ask the Experts

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...

Separated layers of ice over a pipe

I want to know that why there are different layers of ice over a pipe carrying a cryogenic fluid, each layer separated with clear marks / lines? What do these layers signify?

Using nitrogen as a cryogen

Is it possible to achieve -200˚C using nitrogen as a cryogen?

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