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James Webb “Telescope” Documentary Available to Stream

Discovery's "Telescope" documentary, highlighting the high-stakes mission to build NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, premiered on Feb. 20 and is now available for streaming on the TV channel's website. The Webb telescope, which is the scientific successor to—and 100 times more powerful than—Hubble, will peer back over 13.5 billion years...

Jefferson Lab Invites Public to Open House on April 30

The US Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, will hold an open house for the public on Saturday, April 30, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. It is an opportunity for people of all ages to spend the day exploring this world-class research facility. Visitors...

Fermilab Scientists Discover New Four-Flavor Particle

Scientists on the DZero collaboration at the US Department of Energy’s Fermilab have discovered a new particle—the latest member to be added to the exotic species of particle known as tetraquarks. Quarks are point-like particles that typically come in packages of two or three, the most familiar of which are...

Chart Ferox and PPS Win Contract for LNG Reloading Station in Lithuania

Chart Industries, Inc. announced on February 25 that its Czech subsidiary Chart Ferox and EPC consortium partner PPS Pipeline Systems Germany have been selected to provide an LNG reloading station for AB Klaipėdos nafta at the Port of Klaipeda, Lithuania. The project's aim is to develop Klaipeda as a Baltic...

New RF-SQUID Material Invisible to Microwave Radiation

University of Maryland (UMD) physicists and engineers from HYPRES (CSA CSM) have developed a new RF-SQUID cloaking material that can become transparent to microwave radiation with the flip of a switch. The new material could be used to design more efficient communications networks since many wireless communication devices rely on...

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Mixed Refrigerant Cycles

Most cryogenic refrigeration systems, both large scale systems and cryocoolers, use helium as a working fluid. There are a number of advantages to helium, not the least of which is that helium remains a fluid down to the lowest achievable temperatures. In order to freeze helium, pressures of over 20...

Fountain Pumps and He II Phase Separators

Helium II (He II), the second liquid phase of the 4He isotope described in this column in Cold Facts Spring 2010 (http://2csa.us/he2), can be modeled as consisting of two interpenetrating fluids. One, the superfluid component, has zero viscosity and entropy and the other, the normal fluid component, has nonzero viscosity...

Turboexpanders

A vital technology in the refrigerators and liquefiers described in Cold Facts Volume 31 Number 3 is that of turboexpanders. These devices are rotating machines in which the process fluid (e.g., helium) does work against the turboexpander while moving from high pressure to a lower pressure and thus is cooled....

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...