Usually she buys the same number as her age, but this year she rented a small helium tank that ended up filling 56 balloons. For the past ten years Jheri celebrates her birthday by giving balloons away to kids and adults who look like they could use one.
We think of helium in terms of balloons but, particularly in its liquid form, it's uniquely suited to a number of important applications. First discovered when astronomers analyzed the spectrum of a total solar eclipse in 1868 and then later found on Earth, it became part of a race between an English and Dutch scientist. Not because getting there first would lead to uses, but rather to scale a peak.
By the mid 19th century Michael Faraday managed to get down to about -130°C. It seemed almost impossibly cold at the time, but wasn't enough to liquify oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen. He conjectured the trio were permanent gases. About that time Sir William Thompson (later known as Lord Kelvin) deduced from the emerging science of heat, that there was a coldest temperature. An absolute zero -273.15°C. Well below Faraday's mark, it gave hope that much more was possible. Sir James Dewar, at the Royal Institution in London, had been refining techniques to go to very low temperatures and took up the challenge. It didn't take long for him to liquify oxygen and nitrogen, but hydrogen proved more difficult. The Dutch scientist Kamerlingh Onnes was also entered the game. It was an expensive and even dangerous quest. One of the great stories of science follows. Onnes was the good guy, Dewar not so much. I won't go into it, but there's an excellent half hour audio history with a transcript. Listen to it - seriously - then the title of this post might make sense) Without spoiling things too much, Dewar got there first, but helium had been discovered. There was another gas to try and liquify and race got much more serious.
Almost all of the helium on Earth is produced by the radioactive decay of Uranium and Thorium and is trapped in a few pockets around the planet. That wasn't known at the time and it was basically unobtainium. Dewar's personality caused him serious delays and his relentless push led to serious accidents that injured himself and lab assistants. Onnes was banished from his town .. (listen to the audio)
Now that he had liquid helium, Onnes, began to study the bizarre liquid. Curiously the electrical resistance in mercury lowered to liquid helium temperatures fell to zero. Onnes coined the term superconductivity. A few other materials have this property. It allows you to build extremely powerful magnets which are used in MRI machines, maglev trains, particle accelerators and fusion reactor research and more. Almost all of the practical superconductors require liquid helium temperatures. Being able to do this at warmer temperatures would be revolutionary.
In 1986 I was a the big annual meeting of the American Physical Society when Bednorz and Müller of IBM announced they had found superconductivity in a ceramic at liquid nitrogen temperatures. Pandemonium broke out and it was on the front page of the New York Times the next day. It's very unusual for a Nobel Prize to be awarded soon after a discovery, but they were in Stockholm for the ceremony the next year. The material wasn't terribly useful, but it opened up new area of research.
Superconductivity at liquid nitrogen temperatures (77 K, -196°C) is appealing as LN2 is very inexpensive and relatively safe. (Karrie and I have both made ice cream with it:-) More progress has been made with superconductivity at liquid hydrogen temperatures (20 K, -253°C). LH2 is flammable, tricky to handle, and somewhat more expensive, but is almost free when compared with helium. And now practical superconductors for a few uses exist at LH2 temperatures.
If Mount Hydrogen can be economically scaled for a wide range of superconductors, any number of applications where high magnetic fields are important become much more practical. Cheaper MRI, maglev, large motors and generators and beyond. It could bring electric aviation closer. Moving to LN2 superconductors levels much larger scale applications emerge. Perhaps important sections of the electric grid, public transportation and nuclear fusion reactors (the magnets, not the fuel.. plus it's probably a loooong way off)
It quickly gets technical, but a class of superconducting materials that work well at liquid hydrogen temperatures have been around for awhile, but manufacturing them (you find yourself looking at single crystals over a kilometer long) is difficult and expensive. But demand, driven applied science work in fusion reactors, has soared recently and new manufacturing techniques have appeared. Production has grown from meters of wire to hundreds of kilometers. Costs are now within a factor of four or five of a tipping point for widespread use. The problems ahead are difficult, but probably solvable. In ten or fifteen years we may see the beginning of widespread use of these materials and even serious progress at liquid nitrogen temperatures.
The audio piece I linked to describes the lowest temperature made on Earth in about 2004. The record has fallen - it seems likely the coldest spots in the Universe are in physics labs around the Universe - hopefully more than just the ones on this planet.
taking up challenges
About twenty years ago a friend who worries a lot about science communication bemoaned the fact that, while there were a few very good communicators, none of them were at Carl Sagan's level. "Carl had the real work" he said. I got the gist of what he said, but had to ask.
He first heard it from Penn Jillette years before at Bell Labs. Several members of the technical staff were amateur magicians and Penn and Teller were interested in chatting with mathematicians and physicists. [side note: it's really fun to have lunch with these guys and no, I'm not an armature magician] Among themselves, magicians get into the detail of some of the tricks. Not only the technical part, but how a magician interacts with the audience - how the misdirection is done, timing and so on. They'd ask "who has the real work" on a certain trick. An indication of a level of mastery that the community respects.
Carl knew the science he talked about, but was an even better writer and poet as well a wonderful speaker with a presence that worked on television.
I've heard the phrase used a few times since including describing an athlete and a team accomplishing what seemed impossible. That recognition that someone is closer to the impossibility of perfection than almost everyone else in their community. Then, a few days ago, I caught an Alan Alda interview the essayist Adam Gopnik. Gopnik told the magician story and noted it applied to acting as well as almost anything else that's difficult.
Alda and Gopnik launched into a conversion of how you get there. In fact most people will never reach high levels, but trying can bring enormous satisfaction. There's a thrill to trying something you've never tried and slowly, then suddenly making progress. It's an addictive feeling. Try something outside of the field you're good at. It has to be something fun or you won't stick with it. The difference between achievement and accomplishment is critical. Achievement is attaining a metric set by someone else - sadly what much of school is about. For me, accomplishment is something off in the distance where you've set the metrics. It's something you're driven to do because it's rewarding by itself.
A few of you are accomplishment driven. Taking delight being able to sketch something others recognize even though you'll never be an artist. Playing or composing a bit of music. Learning how firefly signaling works. It doesn't have to be useful.. that isn't the point. It can put you into periods of flow and bring periods of delight and even joy.
Some of you have the real work. I'm guessing the fact you're that accomplished is largely because it was fun and you were willing to work ridiculous hard at it.
And one of my favorite examples: when it comes to discovering supernova snack food maker Koichi Itagaki has the real work.
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