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

Study: Online comments hurt science understanding

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that Americans may be as much influenced by reader comments at the end of science news articles as by the articles themselves, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Time magazine honors Fabiola Gianotti and the Higgs-like boson

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is celebrating Time magazine’s naming of its ATLAS spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti as runner-up for 2012 Person of the Year (an honor bestowed on US President Barack Obama) for her leading role in the endeavor to discover the Higgs-like boson. Shown is a mock...

A temperature below absolute zero

Physicists at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching report that they have created an atomic gas in the laboratory that has negative Kelvin values.

Superconductors for efficient wind power plants

An efficient, robust, and compact wind power plant with a 10 MW superconducting generator is being developed by partners from industry and science within the recently established EU project SUPRAPOWER (SUPerconducting, Reliable, lightweight, And more POWERful offshore wind turbine).

A eulogy to Herschel

In January's Physics World, Steve Eales, a University of Cardiff astronomer who leads one of the telescope's largest surveys, explains how this space facility has advanced our understanding of star and galaxy formation.

Heat flows ‘backwards’ across Josephson junction

Tim Wogan in physicsworld.com reports that the thermal Josephson effect, which occurs when heat is transported across a gap between two superconductors, has been measured in the lab for the first time.

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Space Cryogenics

Space cryogenics is, somewhat obviously, the application of cryogenics to space exploration and science. The use of cryogenics in space optimizes the launching of vehicles, provides power and life support to spacecraft and is critical for many scientific observations.Space cryogenics has a number of challenges and has driven both pure...

Exergy

The science of thermodynamics plays a major role in cryogenics. It underlies the various refrigeration cycles, from Carnot to Brayton (Cold Facts Vol. 32 No. 2) and Joule-Thomson, is a fundamental part of the definition of terms such as coefficient of performance (Cold Facts Vol. 31 No. 1) and even...

Cryogenic Treatment

Cryogenic treatment is the process of cooling materials to cryogenic temperatures temporarily to improve their material properties at room temperature. This is distinct from cooling materials down to cryogenic temperatures to take advantage of phenomena such as superconductivity that only occur at cryogenic temperatures. Cryogenic treatment, sometimes also referred to...

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?

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