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just wondering |
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Jun 7, 2017 00:56
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 21:34 |
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Well idk about the inside but here is the outside that's a bigass tank of liquid nitrogen , liquid nitrogen is used as an asphyxiant to calmly and painlessly allow the Sacred Ones to cross over into aether, the same dimension that the LHC at CERN has been opening portals to
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Jun 7, 2017 01:23
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depends whether or not your bare rear end is in the frame, op
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Jun 7, 2017 01:23
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I've always wanted to doodle silly pictures on the clear glass science walls |
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Jun 7, 2017 01:51
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This is a "cryogen free" Helium 3 cryostat affectionately nicknamed "Bender", named after the shiny-assed robot from a cartoon show based on a resemblance (looks more like him with the bottom off). The purpose of any cryostat is to get something cold and this is no different. Deep inside Bender's belly the current experiment is at 3 Kelvin and dropping to a base temperature of 0.75 Kelvin, that's -458.32 Farenheit for some reference. This experiment involves using a coil of copper wires connected to a resonating circuit. The frequency that the circuit oscillates at can be measured extremely precisely, and at such low temperatures all vibratious have ceased, leaving us with a very, very clean signal from the circuit. A superconducting crystal, in this case K doped BaFe2As2, is placed on a pedastal of sapphire and slowly lowered into the cavity of the coil in the aforementioned circuit. As you know, the defining properties of a superconductor are: 1) it has exactly 0 electrical resistance 2) it expels magnetic field (meisner effect) Now that we have a very clean signal, the ability to sweep temperature of the superconductor from low to high (that's the purpose of that rack of electronics), and a material that expels any external magnetic field, we are ready to send a beacon pulse and wait for a response. The beacon signals to the other side that a connection is ready to be made, and if the Masters deem it fit, a message will be received from outside existence, the message taking the form of a small but measurable magnetic field that is now, impossibly, implanted inside the superconducting crystal. We never presume to guess what the message might be, often it is benign or even static, but the United States of America has given the mission to the Department of Energy to act as a communications conduit between the two sides, until the end of days.   
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Jun 7, 2017 02:01
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Macnult posted:I've always wanted to doodle silly pictures on the clear glass science walls Best I can do is chalk 
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Jun 7, 2017 02:16
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This is good stuff. Thanks for posting it. I'm more amused than I should be that the flange at the top is labeled, "Top Flange." The DeWalt-powered pump is also a thing I like.
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Jun 7, 2017 03:48
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DirtyBear posted:This is a "cryogen free" Helium 3 cryostat affectionately nicknamed "Bender", ... Deep inside Bender's belly the current experiment is at 3 Kelvin and dropping to a base temperature of 0.75 Kelvin, that's -458.32 Farenheit for some reference. oh hey i forgot i took pictures before i closed Bender up, here is that experiment. lower part is the oscillating circuit, part above the narrow black cylinder is the area where the sample is held and cooled. 
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Jun 7, 2017 03:57
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idk anything about literally any of this but I'm glad that you're in this for international espionage. e: gotta be honest, when I first saw this thread and the title I thought it was less of an offer and more of an inquiry. hence my original reply. Carry on. Starman Super DX fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jun 8, 2017
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Jun 7, 2017 04:18
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 There is another cryostat we use for measurements, but this cryostat is not "cryogen free" and requires refilling a dewar (basically a giant sized thermos, the blue thing buried in the ground) with liquid helium as the experiment boils the helium into a gas. This cryostat, which unfortunately is just boringly named named "helium 3 system", has some advantages over Bender though, including having higher cooling power at the sample stage position, which means that the superconducting sample can be held at a lower temperature: 0.3 Kelvin, as compared to 0.75 Kelvin with Bender. "Whats the big deal?" you might ask, after all its not even the difference of half a Kelvin and a Kelvin is the same "size" as a Celsius. Well in addition to applied research, such as the superconducting communications crystal inside of Bender, we also do basic research. You see parts of what I've explained so far has been hand-wavey and glossed over important assumptions that were made, assumptions that stop holding true under extreme conditions, in this case even lower temperature by over half. It is true that a superconductor will expel magnetic field, but the physical process that takes place within the superconductor to expel such a field involves a microscopic portion of the superconducting crystal losing its superconductivity and reverting to a metallic, or "normal" state. The area that reverts to a normal state is on the outside of the crystal, leaving the inside superconducting. By measuring the amount of volume of the crystal that reverts to normal state, we can get a sense of how easy/hard it is to destroy the superconducting state. This experiment is particularly...interesting at the moment. Theorists have had seemingly solid theories on how electromagnetic waves propogate through aether, but every calculation leaves the same result: the theoretical energy spent to receive messages is roughly 1,500 times lower than the energy we are spending in experimental operations. Which begs the obvious question, if we are spending enough energy to receive the messages AND still have more receiving energy, what else might have we been receiving? bonus: superconducting crystal, the pieces with wire were for a different measurement, for our purposes the sample size should be roughly 1/6 the size of the pieces with wires attached. the box it is in is basically quarter sized.  and there are lots of those boxes full of samples 
DirtyBear fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Jun 7, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 04:57
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Aha! There's your overworked P-Touch!
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Jun 7, 2017 05:02
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Robot Made of Meat posted:Aha! There's your overworked P-Touch! At the end of the tour, there is a nice pasture we bring them to so they can live out the twilight of their life in peace, a reward for a lifetime of service |
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Jun 7, 2017 05:49
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Jun 7, 2017 13:46
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little munchkin posted:depends whether or not your bare rear end is in the frame, op |
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Jun 7, 2017 13:50
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hey there fellow doe lab workin buddy |
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Jun 7, 2017 14:38
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Oddly enough I just watched a program on the Science Channel describing this, if I understand it all correctly basically since hydrogen is first on the periodic table, it was decided that if other intelligent, advanced civilizations out there were interested in contacted other species, perhaps they would do so at the frequency that elemental hydrogen resonates at, as sort of a public channel everyone would communicate on. By monitoring this frequency at near absolute zero, we might pick up some sort of communication.
https://i.imgur.com/QKTkerO.mp4 |
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Jun 7, 2017 15:08
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this is a great premise for a cyoa, thanks op >send message to nyarlathotep: "ready for you soon, operative DRUMPF clearing the way"
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Jun 7, 2017 15:26
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In a lab on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy, three tentacled, slimy figures huddled over an elaborate control console, their faces eerily lit in a greenish glow. Frantically manipulating dials, they gleefully click and clatter in a strange alien language... Commander Glorbb'loth: "Ahhhh, at last! We have received a message from the Quantum Commutator! Lesserling Grun't, what does the translator have to tell us about the transmission? Lesserling Grun't: Master, it says... it says "knife"! Commander Glorbb'loth: What... WHY? Lesserling Grun't: I don't know, Master! Perhaps there is more to the transmission? Commander Glorbb'loth: Yes, that must be it! Continue monitoring the frequency! There MUST be more to this message! Later that day... Lesserling Grun't: Master, there is more! Much more! Commander Glorbb'loth: Well? OUT WITH IT! Lesserling Grun't: The rest of the message is "to" Commander Glorbb'loth: To? That's it, "to"? Lesserling Grun't: "Meet", Master! Commander Glorbb'loth: "Meet?" what else! Lesserling Grun't: "You"! The last part of the transmission is "you"! Commander Glorbb'loth: So be it. If they want war, it will be WAR! Lesserling Grun't: Oh, boy... https://i.imgur.com/QKTkerO.mp4 |
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Jun 7, 2017 16:13
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alnilam posted:hey there fellow doe lab workin buddy |
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Jun 7, 2017 16:14
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sorry this one's long but I really like this machine plus, need to motivate pretty data. This is yet another cryostat and it works even differently from the two cryostats seen so far, although this one is by far the easiest to understand. For this cryostat, a large container, or dewar, of liquid helium is connected via hose to this cryostat, and the liquid helium is allowed to flow through the cryostat and cool it and any sample attached. The cryostat here is the white cylinder on the table top with a metallic cylinder attached to its top, and the metal arm coming out of it horizontally is where liquid helium is pumped in. What makes this cryostat special is that it has an optical window which you may be able to make out in the center of the metal cylinder, which allows us to observe the samples as they are cooled. Some background on the crystals most useful for our research: the family of 122 Iron Arsenide superconductors (having formula XFe2As2 X is various metals and rare earths) have tetragonal crystal symmetry at room temperature. But, at some lower temperature the crystallographic system transitions to a orthogonal symmetry. this is just a fancy way of saying that at room temperature the crystal is made up of a repeating pattern of atoms arranged into a square with one atom at each corner, and at a lower temperature it is energetically favorable for the crystal to arrange into a rectangle, at least at a microscopic scale, with an atom at each corner. The problem: the square arrangement is directionally agnostic. if you have square A and square B next to each other and rotate square B 90 degrees, physically there is no change as the square is symmetric. But if you have rectangle A next to rectangle B, then rotate rectangle B by 90 degrees, there is a difference. So then, direction matters for the orthogonal (rectangular), but which direction is actually observed in real crystals? and why are these directions chosen? That's the purpose of this system, by using special polarized light, we can distinguish areas of the crystal with long axis of the rectangle pointed horizontally from areas with the long axis pointed vertically. its worth noting that its not always entirely clear why domains of one direction end at a certain position, but one way to force a domain to end in a position is to physically pull on it, similar to how ouija boards work.    and the full crystal looks like this when it is fully mapped out 
DirtyBear fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jun 7, 2017 |
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Jun 7, 2017 18:09
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looks like polishing artefacts to me  
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Jun 7, 2017 18:13
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alnilam posted:looks like polishing artefacts to me its as-grown, these crystals are super nice they grow in easy to work with platelets. plus it was detwinned by mechanical strain, which then showed majority single domain (no features at low temps). you would not be the first person to be skeptical of the technique though, it is decently widely used but I think mostly by crystal growers using floating zone technique in order to calibrate growth rate required for large single crystals |
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Jun 7, 2017 18:21
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I was just joshin ya but p cool stuff how big is that single crystal |
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Jun 7, 2017 19:00
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this one is ~2mmx3.5mmx0.2mm . I think its more typical to give the size of crystals in grams but that measurement is meaningless for the research done here so I'd have no idea on that. crystals cut for measurements in the resonator technique usually have dimensions more like 0.5mmx0.5mmx0.1mm and when resistivity measurements are performed (SPOILER ALERT probably a comment yet to come) the cut dimensions are more like 1.5mmx0.6mmx0.2mm |
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Jun 7, 2017 19:10
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how u measure resistivity is it some four probe shiz or something krazier |
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Jun 7, 2017 19:17
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is it mostly DC in superconductors or do you look at the freq response 
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Jun 7, 2017 19:20
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almost exclusively four probe, but there are some times where for one reason or another its necessary to use montgomery configuration. thermal conductivity is another focus here and sometimes we will use weidemann-franz law to get electrical resistivity, though usually this is just to sanity check measurements.alnilam posted:hey there fellow doe lab workin buddy btw, is admin there pretty spooked out about the executive branch proposed budget? becauuuuuse ours is. obviously the budget is just a proposal and politically it doesnt seem like it will resemble a final version but yeah drat. projections here were something like 60% cut in overall budget and likelihood of cutting entire fields from the lab (cya nano materials!) as well as changing user facilities to fee facilities. also herp derp lets keep it chilling in here ~  -<-<
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Jun 7, 2017 19:27
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alnilam posted:is it mostly DC in superconductors or do you look at the freq response uh well for resistivity measurements the superconducting phase is actually boring since its just... 0. but for superconductors in the normal state AC resistivity measurements are done, but just at a set frequency, whatever the manufacturer of the equipment set it at, so frequency dependence isnt studied. |
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Jun 7, 2017 19:31
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DirtyBear posted:almost exclusively four probe, but there are some times where for one reason or another its necessary to use montgomery configuration. thermal conductivity is another focus here and sometimes we will use weidemann-franz law to get electrical resistivity, though usually this is just to sanity check measurements cool, can you expl how you measure thermal k, do you do tricky laser stuff or what Are you low enough temp that electrons are the only heat carrier DirtyBear posted:btw, is admin there pretty spooked out about the executive branch proposed budget? becauuuuuse ours is. obviously the budget is just a proposal and politically it doesnt seem like it will resemble a final version but yeah drat. projections here were something like 60% cut in overall budget and likelihood of cutting entire fields from the lab (cya nano materials!) as well as changing user facilities to fee facilities. I'll give a limited answer bc i don't want to leave you hanging but after that let's remember the no politics rule yes a little, but also as you said it's just a proposal and the eventual budget is usually nothing like the proposal as a phd student I've been thru years where the proposal had my field zerod out and by the time it was passed it was fully restored and then some people around my office say they've seen the same thing and usually try not to worry too much at this stage in the game... not that we're not at least a little nervous the only thing you can do rn is keep doing good work and call your c*****ssperson and s***tors, call not email, and briefly tell them something like this: "hi I'm NAME and I'm calling from TOWN, ZIP CODE to urge c*****ssperson Guy Fieri to maintain strong funding for the DoE. You see, I'm currently doing this cool research at the DOE lab here in PLACE, this research is important to our nation's future because (if they're from the one party say sustainable energy, if they're from the other one say energy independence) Also, this lab provides a lot of ~~~jobs~~~ to THIS TOWN/STATE and enhances our local economy and prestige, if it weren't for this lab then i, a talented and handsome scientist, would have likely moved to another state, so if you want to keep people like me in our area/state, keep that in mind and defend DoE research funding" That second part is esp important bc reps are obsessed with bringing federal dollars home and with retaining talented people to contribute to the local economy blah blah, that will get their attention way more than talking about the national and global implications Good luck |
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Jun 7, 2017 23:15
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alnilam posted:cool, can you expl how you measure thermal k, do you do tricky laser stuff or what its actually extremely straight forward at least on paper. take a crystal, measure its geometric factor, link thermometers to both ends of the crystal, apply a known amount of heat power (ohmic heat from resistor) to one end and measure the temperature gradient. then (therm conductivity [mw/cm*K]) = (power[mw]) / (geometric factor cross section/length[cm]) * (Thot-Tcold [Kelvin]) the difficulty comes in miniaturizing all of this to fit into an experiment and isolating it all so that heat only goes where it is intended and no external sources of heat affect the sample. For all the other measurements above we can deal with 10-3 or 10-4 Torr, but thermal conductivity requires much better vaccuum more like 10-6 or 10-7 Torr (or even lower, the gage we use bottoms out around these pressures so hard to tell real pressure) and yes at low temperatures the phonon contribution to k is negligible, which makes it easier to use wiedemann-franz to convert thermal conductivity to electronic resistivity. alnilam posted:I'll give a limited answer bc i don't want to leave you hanging yeah was trying to dance around the p-word. I did a thing at the APS march meeting to make my voice heard, and i was also around here a few years back when there was the government shutdown and furloughs. people were worried then, but seems magnified now. I guess the director probably doesn't want people to be caught completely off guard and its better to be told the worst case scenario and prepare for the worst. I'm actually not super worried myself because of statements of support coming out of that body that writes checks to the DOE but there have been some frantic all hands meetings this month |
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Jun 7, 2017 23:57
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I'm very glad you and Al are doing these things, and I don't at all resent my tax dollars going to such things. Keep up the good work!
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Jun 8, 2017 00:40
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Robot Made of Meat posted:I'm very glad you and Al are doing these things, and I don't at all resent my tax dollars going to such things. Keep up the good work! https://i.imgur.com/QKTkerO.mp4 |
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Jun 8, 2017 00:48
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Robot Made of Meat posted:I'm very glad you and Al are doing these things, and I don't at all resent my tax dollars going to such things. Keep up the good work! thank you for your kind words 
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Jun 8, 2017 01:25
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Science!
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Jun 8, 2017 03:37
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DirtyBear posted:thank you for your kind words The sad thing is that I agonized over that short post, trying to be certain that I didn't sound facetous, snarky, or snide. That's not a good commentary on today.
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Jun 8, 2017 03:40
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its worded a little stiffly, but having so much of what i do be peer reviewed and critiqued i'm no stranger to just taking a compliment where i can get it, also no stranger to anxiety lol |
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Jun 8, 2017 04:09
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Sounds like an elaborate government cover up. Science is fake and magic is real!
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Jun 8, 2017 08:35
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Twenty Four posted:Sounds like an elaborate government cover up. Science is fake and magic is real! I'm gonna need a 20-sided die roll on that one. https://i.imgur.com/QKTkerO.mp4 |
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Jun 8, 2017 12:18
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/roll 20
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Jun 8, 2017 12:20
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 21:34 |
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Twenty Four posted:/roll 20 no you only have to roll one of them |
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Jun 8, 2017 13:52
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