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New Form of Matter Is Supersolid

An MIT research team has created a supersolid, a new form of matter that combines both form and viscosity-free flow—properties that most people consider mutually exclusive. The team formed the new material from a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), suspending the superfluid gas in an ultrahigh vacuum and then manipulating the sample...

Air Liquide Picks Lydall for ITER Project

Air Liquide advanced Technologies has chosen Lydall Performance Materials to supply insulation for cryogenic lines the company is manufacturing for the ITER fusion machine. Both are CSA Corporate Sustaining Members. ITER engineers use extreme low temperature to cool the superconducting magnets needed to confine and stabilize the machine's fusion reaction....

Illini Physicists Develop Superconducting Nanoscale Memory Cell

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new nanoscale memory cell that provides stable memory at a smaller size than other proposed memory devices and holds tremendous promise for successful integration with superconducting processors.

Chart Announces Sale of Qdrive Technologies

Chart Industries, Inc. (CSA CSM) has completed the sale of certain assets related to its Qdrive® set of products to RIX Industries. For the past several years Chart has developed and supplied QDrive technologies to RIX in support of liquid oxygen systems for military applications. Qdrive operations currently located in...

HYPRES Launches New Subsidiary, Expands Efforts in Quantum Computing

HYPRES, a CSA CSM known as the Digital Superconductor Company, has launched Superconducting Energy Efficient Quantum Computing, or SeeQC, a wholly owned subsidiary headquartered in Rome. SeeQC will focus on developing superconducting technologies for a variety of applications, including scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing, quantum communications and quantum simulators. The company...

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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...

Wind Tunnels

Dr. Robert Kilgore The development of the cryogenic wind tunnel is one of many significant breakthroughs in both cryogenics and wind-tunnel technology made during the past millennium. Interest in the development of high-speed commercial and military aircraft resulted in a review of problems of flow simulation in transonic wind tunnels...

History of Cryogenics

From the Fall 1999 issue of Cold Facts magazine Millennium Breakthroughs A variety of CSA members give different perspectives on the past millennium: What were the most significant breakthroughs in cryogenics during the past millennium? Prof. R.G. Scurlock, Kryos Technology, scurlock@soton.ac.uk (“Breakthrough” = way through obstacles — Oxford English Dictionary)...

Cryobiology

Andreas Sputtek Past President Society for Cryobiology sputtek@uke.uni-hamburg.de or http://www.sputtek.de/. The word cryobiology (from the Greek words “cryo” = cold, “bios” = life, and “logos” = science) literally signifies the science of life at low temperatures. In practice, this field comprises the study of any biological material or system (e.g.,...

Cryogenic Insulation

James E. Fesmire Cryogenics Test Laboratory NASA Kennedy Space Center james.e.fesmire@nasa.gov Introduction In today’s world, the use of cryogenics and low-temperature refrigeration is taking a more and more significant role. From the food industry, transportation, energy, and medical applications to the Space Shuttle, cryogenic liquids must be stored, handled, and...

Power usage: cryogenic systems vs. regular refrigerators

A recent project highlighted to me that closed cycle cryogenic cooling systems use far more electrical power to reduce temperatures by a few watts than regular refrigerators. I am sure it must be something to do with the extra difficulty of removing the heat from the liquid nitrogen or similar...

Redundancy strategies for mechanical -80C freezers

I was wondering what kind of redundancy strategies are people using for their mechanical -80C freezers? I am aware of the following. Please add if you are doing something different. 1) 1 Backup freezer for every 10 freezers – Empty and maintained at -80C at all times 2) Backup C02...

Method to move components in a cryogenic environment

Does anyone know of a method with which to reliably move components in a cryogenic environment? We are interested in moving detectors in a cryogenically cooled (2K) vacuum chamber, which is contained within a larger cryostat/isolation vacuum with thermal shields. As the desired horizontal or vertical displacement is between 10...