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APS Joins SCOAP3 Consortium

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and the American Physical Society (APS) have entered into an agreement through SCOAP3 to provide open access to high-energy physics articles published in APS journals. The partnership, which begins in January 2018, covers articles from Physical Review C, Physical Review D and Physical...

NCIS Bungles Investigation, Conflates Cryogenics and Cryonics

A recent episode NCIS, a popular CBS police procedural, featured a villain who killed his victims with liquid nitrogen, interring them alive inside a homemade cryonics chamber. During the big reveal, the NCIS writers conflate cryonics with cryogenics, using one of the show's trope scientific experts to present the latter...

CSA Board Member Joins Superconductivity Center at FSU

Florida State University has hired Lance Cooley, CSA board member and a scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (CSA CSM), to join the Applied Superconductivity Center (ASC) at the FSU-based National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. He will also have a faculty appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at...

Physicists Observe Negative Mass in Bose-Einstein Condensate

Washington State University physicists have created a fluid with negative mass. Push it, and unlike every physical object in the known world, it doesn’t accelerate in the direction it was pushed. It accelerates backward. Led by Peter Engels, WSU professor of physics and astronomy, the researchers generated the conditions for...

O”H” What a Feeling, Toyota Introduces Hydrogen Powered Semi

Toyota has announced a new zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell system designed for semi-truck use at the Port of Los Angeles. Dubbed "Project Portal," the proof of concept vehicle was unveiled at a press conference with port officials and representatives from the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission....

European XFEL Commissions Its Particle Accelerator

The European XFEL has successfully commissioned the particle accelerator that will drive its X-ray laser. When fully operational, the research facility will produce up to 27,000 X-ray laser flashes per second, each so short and intense that researchers can make pictures of structures and processes at the atomic level. The...

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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...

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...

Suppliers of regenerator materials

I was looking for suppliers of regenerator materials. Can you please provide a list of vendors for: • Lead spheres • Bronze screen discs • Rare earth materials and spheres Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

Containing ice accumulation while recovering helium

We are implementing a system to recover helium from our Janis ST-500 continuous flow LHe cryostat. The recovery system uses standard 1/4″ plastic tubing, which we connect directly to the cryostat’s exhaust port. The problem with this setup is that the gas is still quite cold as it leaves the...