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Scientists Just Cracked One-Way Superconductivity, Thought Impossible for Over 100 Years

Other researchers had previously managed to get a superconducting current to flow in one direction by applying powerful magnetic fields. But these are difficult to apply precisely and are impractical for use inside miniaturized electronic circuits. The new device, on the other hand, could open the door to all kinds of...

Realizing the STEP Fusion Dream

Deliver a UK prototype fusion energy plant, targeting 2040, and thereafter a sustainable, long-term pathway to the commercial viability of nuclear fusion. That’s the ambitious objective – and even more ambitious timeline – confronting the scientists, engineers and project managers currently sweating the details for the conceptual design of the...

The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works.

To look back in time at the cosmos’s infancy and witness the first stars flicker on, you must first grind a mirror as big as a house. Its surface must be so smooth that, if the mirror were the scale of a continent, it would feature no hill or valley...

SLAC’s Superconducting X-ray Laser Reaches Operating Temperature Colder Than Outer Space

Nestled 30 feet underground in Menlo Park, California, a half-mile-long stretch of tunnel is now colder than most of the universe. It houses a new superconducting particle accelerator, part of an upgrade project to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National...

Graphene Quantum Magic Delivers a New Class of Superconducting Material

Superconductors are materials that conduct electrical current with almost no electrical resistance at all. This property makes them particularly appealing for a variety of applications, including loss-less power cables, electric motors and generators, and powerful electromagnets that can be utilized for MRI imaging and magnetic levitating trains. Nagoya University researchers...

Emission-Free Flying on the Horizon

Boeing’s groundbreaking cryogenic fuel tank and Airbus’s hydrogen-powered jet engine bring promise to the future of aviation. A new type of cryogenic tank, designed and manufactured by Boeing, completed a critical series of tests at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center at the end of 2021. The successful test campaign advances the...

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 Treatment of Materials

F.J. Diekman Controlled Thermal Processing, Inc. info@metal-wear.com Cryogenic Processing (also called cryogenic treatment, and incorrectly “cryogenic tempering”) is a process that uses cryogenic temperatures to modify materials to enhance their performance. Cryogenic Processing involves the slow reduction in temperature of the material to at least -300°F (-185°C) and holding the...

Cryogenics in Space

Peter Kittel University of California-Berkeley pkittel@cal.berkeley.edu Space Cryogenics is the application of cryogenics to space missions. These applications fall into two broad areas, supporting space science missions and supporting the space transportation infrastructure. Science applications: The atmosphere is opaque to much of the electro-magnetic spectrum. In space, the absence of...

Cryosurgery

Review of Cryosurgery Boris Rubinsky, PhD Hebrew University School of Science and Engineering Research Center for Biomedical Engineering 78b Ross Building Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904 Israel rubinsky@cs.huji.ac.il as published in Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering, August 2000, Vol. 2, pp. 157-187. Abstract: Cryosurgery is a surgical technique that employs freezing...

Liquefied Natural Gas

Liquefied Natural Gas as it relates to the Field of Cryogenics John W. Bonn VJ Systems, LLC johnbonn@vjsystems-lic.com Today the world is looking for a cleaner fuel and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plays a large part in achieving this goal. LNG in a liquid form is at -162°C (-259°F) 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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