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Misaligned Stacks of Graphene are Stirring up Physics

An MIT team has turned graphene into a superconducting material that allows electricity to flow without resistance. The scientists achieved this feat by placing one sheet of graphene over another, rotating the other sheet to a special orientation and cooling the ensemble to a fraction of a degree above absolute...

Probing the Universe: SQUID Amplifiers for Next-Generation Large Focal Plane Array

Physicists around the world are using experiments to answer fundamental questions, including theoretical models and experimental evidence. The Simons Array is an example of one such experiment, used to observe Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, an afterglow from the universe created when it was just 380,000 years old.

28th Space Cryogenics Workshop

CSA and NASA’s Cryogenics Technical Discipline Team announce the 28th Space Cryogenics Workshop, to be held July 17-19, 2019, at the Heritage Hotel, Southbury CT. All aspects of space cryogenics will be represented, with an emphasis on those related to space exploration.

ISRU Research Holds Promise for Space Exploration

First explored for cryogenic use in space exploration, ISRU has expanded further and today involves hardware and operations that harness and utilize local in-situ resources to create products and services for robotic and human exploration.

Start Your Cryogenics Career with a Boom!

Dr. Jacob Leachman never got to meet Dr. Boom, but says he got to know him through a legacy of accomplishments, including Boom's passion for inspiring students to enter the field.

CERN FCC Study Explores Cooling Requirements For Future Circular Colliders

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is the world’s most powerful collider with planned operation through the mid 2030s. Therefore, it is timely to design a future collider that could identify physics beyond the standard model and help us explain the open questions about our universe.

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...

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