Cold Facts Digital – Page 63 – The go-to place for Cryogenics and Superconductivity

Help Us Celebrate Women in Cryogenics and Superconductivity

We're looking for input for our February issue of Cold Facts. Participants are invited to answer the questions posted below and send their answers to Brian Dudley, Cold Facts Editor, editor@cryogenicsociety.org, by January 27.

CERN Ramps Up Neutrino Program

In the midst of the verdant French countryside looms a workshop the size of an aircraft hangar. Inside, CERN technicians are busy constructing two 8-meter tall cubes to test prototype detectors for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). Each will in time contain 770 metric tons of liquid argon permeated...

NIST Physicists Squeeze Light, Cool Microscopic Drum below Quantum Limit

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have cooled a microscopic mechanical drum to less than one-fifth of a single quantum, or packet of energy. The result, according to the research team, is lower than ordinarily predicted by quantum physics and the technique used could theoretically cool...

Ultracold Liquid Hydrogen May Be Fuel of the Future

NASA has wrapped up testing on a new cooling system that supercools hydrogen to -423°F. It's housed in a shuttle-era storage facility engineers saved from demolition five years ago at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and thereafter transformed into a test site for new ground operations demo units.

Woman Gives Birth from Ovary Frozen in Childhood

The first woman to have an ovary frozen before the onset of puberty has given birth to a baby boy. As a nine-year-old child, Moaza Al Matrooshi, now 24, suffered from a severe blood disorder, beta-thalassemia, and needed chemotherapy in preparation for a bone marrow transplant to treat the condition....

New Method Increases Precision of Atom Interferometry

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, a research team from the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms presents a method to increase the precision of atom interferometry with Bose-Einstein condensates, a result, the group says, that eliminates a source of error endemic to earlier designs. Interferometers using the new...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Liquid Hydrogen

Hydrogen becomes a liquid at 20K and 1 bar. Liquid hydrogen (LH2) is an important substance in industry, transportation and research. Industrial uses of hydrogen include applications in the electronics, glass, chemical and metal processing fields. In these applications, the hydrogen is generally used as a room temperature gas but...

Superconducting Radiofrequency Cavities

Superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities represent an important application of cryogenics and superconductivity. SRF cavities are a technology for accelerating charged particle beams via the transfer of radiofrequency (RF) energy to the beams via resonant structures. As such, they are frequently found in large particle accelerators used for scientific research....

Thermal Radiation Shields

Actively cooled thermal radiation shields are a common feature of cryostats whose lowest temperature is less than 77K. These shields, which typically operate at temperatures between that of LN2 and 40K, block thermal radiation from higher temperatures from reaching lower temperature cryogenic components or fluids. Since the heat radiated from...

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...

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?

CATEGORIES