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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)...

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Refrigerators and Liquefiers

Two of the most common terms used in cryogenics are “refrigerator” and “liquefier.” These terms describe similar and, as will be seen, in some cases identical components. A refrigerator provides cooling (that is, absorbs heat) at cryogenic temperatures. Refrigerators typically put a working fluid (such as helium) through one of...

Air Separation

Air separation is one of the largest, as well as earliest, industrial applications of cryogenics. In this process, cryogenic temperatures are used to separate air into its constituent gases: nitrogen (78.08%), oxygen (20.95%), argon (0.93%) and carbon dioxide (0.3%). Trace gases such as krypton, neon, xenon and helium total far...

Coefficient of Performance and Figure of Merit

The coefficient of performance (COP) is used to describe the effectiveness of refrigerators, including those operating at cryogenic temperatures. The COP is defined as the amount of heat removed at the cryogenic operating temperature of the refrigerator divided by the amount of work that must be applied to remove the...

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...

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...