Father of Cryogenics Born This Day

Link

Willem Hendrik Keesom was a Dutch physicist who pioneered cryogenics and was the first to solidify helium under pressure (1926). In work done with M. Wolfke, after studying discontinuities in several properties of helium at very low temperatures (1927) they suggested that it may be due to a phase change. They called the helium above the transitional helium I and the helium below the transition helium II. In 1932, he produced a temperature just two degrees above absolute zero (-272°C ).

When you’re trapped on an ice world with no hope of rescue, who do you want with you?

Today In History: LPs Introduced

Today in 1948, the first successful long-playing microgroove phonograph records were introduced to the public at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. Made of nonbreakable Vinilyte plastic, and designed for the new speed of 33-1/3 r.p.m., the records were developed by Dr. Peter Goldmark of Columbia Records. The 12 inch record could play 23 minutes per side, as compared to only 4 minutes per side on the earlier 78 rpm record. The first LP featured violinist Yehudi Menuhin.

Columbia originated the term "LP" itself, which was copyrighted. Thus, although many other firms could make long-playing records, only Columbia could make an LP. Link

Images Link

"Doomsday Vault" Built In Arctic

Norway is starting construction on a "doomsday vault" in the Arctic which is designed to house all known varieties of the world's crops.

Dug into a frozen mountainside on the island of Svalbard, it is hoped the project will safeguard crop diversity in the event of a global catastrophe. More than 100 countries have backed the vault, which will store seeds, packaged in foil, at sub-zero temperatures.

Fenced in and guarded, with steel airlock doors, motion detectors and polar bears roaming outside - the concrete facility will, its backers say, be the most secure building of its type in the world.

The vault's purpose is to ensure survival of crop diversity in the event of plant epidemics, nuclear war, natural disasters or climate change; and to offer the world a chance to restart growth of food crops that may have been wiped out.

At temperatures of minus 18C (minus 0.4F), the seeds could last hundreds, even thousands, of years. Even if all cooling systems failed the temperature in the frozen mountain would never rise above freezing due to the permafrost on the mountainside.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust, founded in 2004, will help run the vault, which is planned to open and start accepting seeds from around the world in September 2007. The bank is eventually expected to house some three million seeds. Link

X-Men © Marvel Comics

Trout Mask Replicated

1958


1969

Enter: The Forbidden Dimsension!

Jackson Phibes recently reanimated 'The Forbidden Dimension' for a gig in Calgary & sent along the above photo proof to your Atomic Surgeon. I'll have to dust off the Time Bubble and go back and check it out.

Click HERE to be transported to the Forbidden Dimsension!



But are you brave enough to enter "The Scary Door?"

Quantum Dots Count Single Electrons

Link

A device capable of counting the individual electrons in an electric current, by feeding them through a pair of quantum dots, has been developed by scientists in Japan. The device can even spot the "backscattering" that occurs when electrons travel the wrong way through a circuit.

Toshima Fujisawa and colleagues at NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Atsugi, Japan, created a circuit incorporating a two quantum dots - semiconducting crystals just a few nanometres in diameter - which only let a single electron pass through at a time. After switching the current on, they used another nanoscale device, called a quantum point contact, to measure the charge contained within each quantum dot. This revealed whether it contained an electron or not.

By taking measurements every 20 microseconds the researchers could count the flow of individual electrons as they passed through the quantum dots, and also determine the direction in which they were moving. Link

Ka-Bala, The Mystic One!

The Addams Family: