I have worked for decades in a group doing applied laser spectroscopy. We consisted of engineers, chemists, and physicists. I cannot remember who was what. Maybe 50 years ago the distinctions have been larger.
Engineers slow things down and do things incorrectly. They couldn't even design an o ring that worked in cold temperatures and were too spergoid to let anyone know so killed some astronauts.
Fun Fact, I'm a scuba diver and off the socal coast it can be cold so some use Dry Suits where there are latex seals at the neck and wrist to keep water out. You then us the area of the suit as a buoyancy device using the air in the air tank you use to breath. A friend who is a advanced Tech Diver found out I'm a welder and ask if I would let him have some of my Argon shielding gas so he can use it as the gas inside the suit. He said it has much better resistance to heat flow and hence keep you warmer.
If I remember correctly, argon is used in some double and triple pane windows to give better thermal insulation, and actually because it's denser than air, it creates a discontinuity for the transmission of sound, so you get acoustic insulation as well.
Argon has a lower heat conductivity and a lower heat capacity than air. Argon fools Pirani vacuum gauges. Electric sparks are much longer in Argon as in air; I have gained painful experience therewith.
Its heat insulation property vs air is negligibly different. It starts to make a difference when you use trimix (helium) in mixture. Then it's better to use argon or air for dry suit inflation.
Yeah, argon is a little better than air in terms of resisting convective heat transfer. (maybe 30% better, not *usually* enough better for divers to bother with a separate tank if they're breathing air) Noble gases have lower specific heat capacity than most other gases because they're monatomic, so they don't have any molecular bonds which cam store energy in vibrational modes - only the atomic kinetic energy itself. The heat capacity of a fluid is one factor that affects heat transfer. But not any old noble gas will do - average molecular velocity (which relates to speed of sound) also has a massive impact - helium atoms are much lighter than argon atoms (or air molecules) and so the average velocity is about 3x higher than for air or argon. This means helium is about 6x better at transferring heat than air, and maybe 8x better than argon. Now this DOES become important for very deep divers breathing mixtures with a lot of helium - you probably don't want to inflate your drysuit with 80% helium!
We used to get argon extremely pure to fill up argon ion laser tubes. A similar issue too, impurities like oxygen or hydrogen both make the current arc difficult to ignite and unstable, as well as quenching the argon ions. It needed less than 0.1ppb of H or O, but the other noble gasses had a lot higher allowance. In fact you could mix argon and krypton for a white laser bean or mix argon an neon for a UV laser beam. ❤
I had to pause and check your numbers for the volume of air need to extract 70,000 tonnes of Argon from the air, because it seemed counter-intuative. However, your numbers are right. Thank you for the nudge to find out! :)
One thing about distillation that you sort of glossed over. It's not as simple as 'maintain this temperature and you get nothing but nitrogen, then at this temperature you get argon.' Just like with oil or alcohol, the higher boiling point of one liquid over another doesn't provide perfect separation. For example, the vapor pressure of water at 190F is high enough that you get a fair amount of water in your moonshine. And I'm sure with argon distillation, the vapor pressure of oxygen is such that you get a fair bit of O2 in your argon. That's why further 'scrubbing' is needed for ethanol, just like with your argon equipment.
Soooo happy to find you still cared about us and hadn’t decided to followed the lead of all the good science jokes! No siree-Bob…huh, I mean Dr. Don. You’re no joke; and Subatomic Stories was the only good that came out of COVID. Please do your best to rally the team and post as often as space-time allows; you are such a good teacher and have the best, way coolest tee-shirts in the universe and Beyond…✨👨🏼🚀💫👨🏼🚀✨Many thanks!
I love that a sabine video pop up before this one talking about how formilab spent 2 billions ofor this and the result might not tell something really valuable. But from engineering point fo view regarding doing this is interesting. Lets see what are the results out of this
The result won't tell us what the hype articles say, but it's still valuable science. She said she's not against doing this kind of science, especially since it's the U.S. spending the billions, not Germany.
@@yeroca tbh I haven't watched her video because while she started out OK back in the day I decided to curate a bit when she transitioned into a salty has-been. Then again she is not the only science communicator who devolved into being just another youtuber
@ Thanks for your comments. She can work out solutions to GR, and understands quantum mechanics very well (as well as what's wrong with its current state), so she's not your average youtuber. But I get that she can come off as caustic and a naysayer if you watch only selected videos. She's also got quite a number of positive science and tech videos as well -- even giving Stephen Wolfram's view of the Universe a "he might be onto something", which at this point is still quite speculative. Anyway, there are plenty of science communicators to choose from on YT, so we all have our picks.
Thanks, Dr. Lincoln, for a great talk! Feel free to stick to metric units in these talks. Anyone who cares enough to learn about argon detection of neutrinos will be fine with it. Keep these talks coming, I love it!
An excellent video. Very interesting to see the use of distillation to separate argon from the mixture of argon, nitrogen and oxygen. Under extreme conditions, like very high temperatures or pressures, argon can form some compounds with fluorine, such as argon fluorohydride (HArF).
I would love to see a deep dive video on the argon production, showing the various stages of production in action. Learning about how those issues of fighting contaminants and losses are accomplished would be worth including as well.
with liquor distillation, everything boils at the same temperature (around 95C for most fermentations) , but in different proportions, isnt it the same qith liquid air ?
Alcohol / water mixture has a weird phase recursive phase diagram. It’s more similar to distilling oils with distinct boiling points (but random uncertainties for individual molecules).
Yes, I would be very interested in a video about the different kinds of matter used in different kinds of Neutrino detectors. It always confused me why on uses this and the other uses that.
Old production chemist here. I was literally yelling "the oxygen has too much electronegativity!" at my screen and woke up my wife. Finally a video where I'm thinking "duh" the whole time instead of rewinding to grok physics concepts.
Back in the late 1960s, I needed very O2-free N2 and Ar for some experiments. I dissolved aluminum in silver metal and made it into a steel wool-like material. Used this to make a filter operating at about 250ºC. The O2 would dissolve into the sliver and react internally with the aluminum, forming aluminum oxide but not passivating the surface as the diffusion rate of the O2 atoms was much faster than the aluminum atom in the silver matrix. I used a 40 ft GC with ultra-pure He carrier gas diffused through glass. I still had negative peaks with a tritium ionization detector, indicating I was several hundred times lower O2 than the carrier gas standard. This could be an actual use for this technology. It was more pure than I really needed.
Awesome, in general and I never thought about filtering the Argon or other inert gases through a reactive metal filter to purify. About obvious if thought about, though never have. Neat. Interesting is many do not think about mining air. After seeing the towers that do, I have always thought that is the coolest mining operation. 🙂 Literally temp wise and in awesome scale.
I'm slightly disturbed that the engineers aren't wearing SCBA when working in an enclosed space with lots of high density inert gas. Maybe it's just a promotional video, or some stock footage, but it's still scary. If that's what they're actually doing, perhaps point out how dangerous it is at the next meeting?
Thanks for your concern! To clarify, the detectors for LBNF/DUNE are still under construction so there is not currently any argon (or other high-density gas) present at LBNF/DUNE. We’re very careful about safety protocols on site, and the safety of our engineers is of paramount importance.
@fermilab thanks for letting me know. I spent a good few years in the breathing equipment industry and I find heavier than air inert gas absolutely terrifying! You're dead long before you can don breathing gear. Really very dead, as it strips the oxygen out of your blood and resuscitation doesn't generally work. (I know someone who tried and couldn't bring them back) It's so fast that the normal practice of putting emergency breathing equipment on the wall ready for an emergency is far far far too slow. It pools so you can just walk down stairs and die. There's no odor, no smoke, no warning. Even if there are low oxygen alarms, by the time you walk 10 steps to the breathing gear, you won't know what to do with it. Then you collapse on the floor and that tempts others in to try to rescue you, and they die too.
@@XEinstein Sure! Sorry about that. Self Contained Breathing Apparatus. Generally a full face mask and a cylinder of compressed air (though there are variations). To use you open the valve on the cylinder and put the mask over your face and inhale. That starts the air. It's provided at a slightly higher pressure than what's around you, so any leaks, leak out. Then you put the head straps over your head and tighten, then put the cylinder on like a back pack. Almost every industrial work space that handles poisonous, flammable or oxygen deficient materials will have them, but in most cases they sit on the wall in a box, ready to go. That's because in most cases you can tell instantly that something has gone wrong and can take one off the wall and put it on. If you want to see one Dräger, Scott and MSA are popular brands. I can't mention what to do with that information on here, but I'm sure you know how to find out more.
In the process of converting Argon back to a gas and then into a liquid underground, how do they prevent recontamination. Could the pipes alone potentially contaminate the Argon?
We still use feet, inches, and miles in the UK every day, and we always will I think. These words to describe distances are far better than metric words which are too long and the spelling is difficult. We do use metric for important stuff like science, construction, labels. e.g. a tennis court net is 3 feet high in the middle which is much easier than saying it is 91.4 centimetres.
I’m sure that in the future, thousands of tons of extremely pure liquid Argon will be available in every corner drugstore, but in 2025 it’s a little hard to come by.
In the year 2000 (hat tip to Conan O'Brien) we will all have massive neutrino detectors under our houses because they will be used for a global internet where data is transmitted by neutrino beams through the Earth. Mark my ridiculous words: it will happen. But yeah, no.
Disclaimer up front The following answer is based upon incomplete information. Based upon the little bit that he talked about the method of detection in DUNE and the little bit I have read about the water-based detectors, the latter detectors work by detecting Cerenkov radiation formed when neutrinos knock electrons out of orbit and they travel through the water faster than the speed of light in water (which is not as fast as the speed of light in vacuum), whereas the DUNE detector will directly detect the electrons knocked loose by high-speed electrons, which will work even if the electrons that knocked them loose were too slow to make Cerenkov radiation. But don't consider this an authoritative answer.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio This answer is correct. In addition, the exact details whereby the electrons are collected provides for a significantly more precise calculation of the path of the high energy particles, compared to the Cerenkov radiation. On top of that, argon is heavier than water, which makes it a denser and more effective target.
@@drdon5205 I didn't think about the liquid density. In principle, krypton or xenon would be even better, but they are just too insanely expensive for only a modest improvement in performance (unless the greater atomic weight yields some kind of better-than-linear improvement)..
It’s interesting that they actually raise the temperature to distill out the gases. I initially thought they might lower the temperature until they condensed out of the air. What is the advantage of raising the temperature instead of lowering it?
Great video. Argon is used in an instrument called an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS) which I have some experience in. For strontium isotope analysis, krypton was an interferrent. I looked into inert gas getter pumps for removing it but the krypton was not reactive enough. I think that is the technology you refer to using Cu metal. Also is it worth trying to sequester the CO2 you remove? I calculate ~3000 metric tons; not a lot on the global scale but perhaps worthwhile. I'm retired now so check my math! thanks, Don
I imagined a concrete pad with ports like a gas station, and an argon truck hooked up to it just like a gas tanker at a gas station. And they just kind of dumped it in, down long pipes in the ground until it reached the tank far below. Sure, a bunch would evaporate as the tank cooled down, but just dump in more to top it off occasionally. That's not right at all, turns out.
To Dr. Don & anyone who reads this, - Singularity is not quantum. It is in fact opposite of quantum. - Singularity itself does not experience space at all just like photons don't experience time. - Inside singularity the Gravity, Entropy are both 0 and there is no degree of freedom. - "Quantum world experiences more Space whereas Cosmic world experiences more Time." - The time we experience is actually Time Dilation and the space we experience is in fact Space Dilation. - Quantum particles even though separated in space are not separated in time. They are in fact very closely entangled in time and experience time together irrespective of their position in space. - Time also expands just as Space expands. - Even though fabric of spacetime is one but an objects behavior inside spacetime is resultant of its combined motion in Space & Time separately. - Gravitational waves are nothing but result of change in location of center of mass. I can prove every sentence mentioned above without breaking a single proven physics.
As an engineer I'd quite like to know how many MW or GW DUNE needs to consume to produce the 70 tons of Argon and then get it down to the detector. Must be massive.
@@Christopher-b1p Well, that's the big thing. Argon also ionizes more easily and scintillates, both of which are detection mechanisms. But it's the density thing that matters most. Krypton or xenon would be better, but they are way more expensive.
I can't remember where I heard it, but during a supernovas core collapse there's so many neutrinos that the outward pressure applied by them exceeds the force of gravity or something?
It's true, Argon doesn't make your voice funny. It makes your voice scary! Don't try this at home though, unlike Helium, Argon is heavier than air so you could suffocate on it... Probably why it wasn't demoed in the video. On another note, fantastic video!
You can suffocate on helium too. IIRC, during a helium shortage the Party Store started selling helium mixed with enough oxygen so people wouldn't suffocate.
Argon doesn't really change your voice pitch, as it is about the same atomic mass as N2. If you really wanna channel James Earl Jones, you want Xenon, which IS much denser than air. Best to experiment with this with your torso upside down.
I'm glad I found at least one physicist who likes engineers, lol. The moral of the story is: if you're an engineer and you hang out with physicists on Twitter, don't tell them you're an engineer!
I feel like turning things into neutrinos, "just because we can", is a something of a waste of potential energy. We know that neutrinos don't interact with a whole lot, and it's very hard for them to be used to combine other particles to make a larger particle. This means that this energy is almost entirely lost once it gets released. The universe would eventually dissolve into a sea of other neutrinos as time goes on. Some may still interact with other neutrinos, but they'll largely not be doing anything at the end of time. The universe's total potential energy will be locked inside the neutrinos, until such time as they destabilize and return their energy to the background field. In other words, breaking things down just because we can only means that a small amount of that energy is permanently unrecoverable. Although there is a lot of matter for us to play with, and we, ourselves, could never hope to use it all, we would still be wasting energy for the sake of amusement.
Former chem engineer here. How are you going to get the air out of the detector chamber so that it doesn't contaminate the pure Ar you put in? Pulling a vacuum on a large chamber can be difficult and would require it to be built to hold back the pressure of the atmosphere, otherwise the chamber would implode. My guess is that the DUNE engineers will partially remove the air with vacuum pumps and then break the partial vacuum with pure Ar. They'll need to repeat this vacuum-Ar cycle several times to remove enough O2 to avoid contaminating the Ar. Isn't engineering fun? Now, before you remove the air, how do you clean the chamber? ...
I was going to do a chemistry joke, but all the best Ar gon.
No reaction. I see the people here are very noble. I rarely interact myself in order to avoid creating an electron trail. I prefer to stay neutral.
Finally, it is good to see you again after long time Dr. Lincoln!
I was beginning to think he retired!!
He originally fought CO in the Blackhawk war. They even wrote about it!
Engineers help make science happen. Man I hope they know how much they are appreciated
Science and engineering is yin and yang.
We do... And thank you for saying it out loud.
I have worked for decades in a group doing applied laser spectroscopy. We consisted of engineers, chemists, and physicists. I cannot remember who was what. Maybe 50 years ago the distinctions have been larger.
The distinctions are not in the field or application but in personalities rather perspective point to be notes ;) One informs and the other applies.
Engineers slow things down and do things incorrectly. They couldn't even design an o ring that worked in cold temperatures and were too spergoid to let anyone know so killed some astronauts.
This channel is excellent, and Dr. Lincoln has excellent camera presence for these videos.
Fun Fact,
I'm a scuba diver and off the socal coast it can be cold so some use Dry Suits where there are latex seals at the neck and wrist to keep water out. You then us the area of the suit as a buoyancy device using the air in the air tank you use to breath. A friend who is a advanced Tech Diver found out I'm a welder and ask if I would let him have some of my Argon shielding gas so he can use it as the gas inside the suit. He said it has much better resistance to heat flow and hence keep you warmer.
If I remember correctly, argon is used in some double and triple pane windows to give better thermal insulation, and actually because it's denser than air, it creates a discontinuity for the transmission of sound, so you get acoustic insulation as well.
Argon has a lower heat conductivity and a lower heat capacity than air. Argon fools Pirani vacuum gauges. Electric sparks are much longer in Argon as in air; I have gained painful experience therewith.
Its heat insulation property vs air is negligibly different. It starts to make a difference when you use trimix (helium) in mixture. Then it's better to use argon or air for dry suit inflation.
Yeah, argon is a little better than air in terms of resisting convective heat transfer. (maybe 30% better, not *usually* enough better for divers to bother with a separate tank if they're breathing air)
Noble gases have lower specific heat capacity than most other gases because they're monatomic, so they don't have any molecular bonds which cam store energy in vibrational modes - only the atomic kinetic energy itself.
The heat capacity of a fluid is one factor that affects heat transfer. But not any old noble gas will do - average molecular velocity (which relates to speed of sound) also has a massive impact - helium atoms are much lighter than argon atoms (or air molecules) and so the average velocity is about 3x higher than for air or argon.
This means helium is about 6x better at transferring heat than air, and maybe 8x better than argon. Now this DOES become important for very deep divers breathing mixtures with a lot of helium - you probably don't want to inflate your drysuit with 80% helium!
I remember an ad on the radio for a weld/supply company in B.C.
" We mine the sky " 😅
We used to get argon extremely pure to fill up argon ion laser tubes. A similar issue too, impurities like oxygen or hydrogen both make the current arc difficult to ignite and unstable, as well as quenching the argon ions. It needed less than 0.1ppb of H or O, but the other noble gasses had a lot higher allowance. In fact you could mix argon and krypton for a white laser bean or mix argon an neon for a UV laser beam. ❤
Big fan of the helium voice joke, thanks for adding it :)
If there is a leak though, arrgh gone!
Got to love the Scintillation of liquid argon.
Appreciate the inside look!
I had to pause and check your numbers for the volume of air need to extract 70,000 tonnes of Argon from the air, because it seemed counter-intuative.
However, your numbers are right. Thank you for the nudge to find out! :)
One thing about distillation that you sort of glossed over. It's not as simple as 'maintain this temperature and you get nothing but nitrogen, then at this temperature you get argon.' Just like with oil or alcohol, the higher boiling point of one liquid over another doesn't provide perfect separation. For example, the vapor pressure of water at 190F is high enough that you get a fair amount of water in your moonshine. And I'm sure with argon distillation, the vapor pressure of oxygen is such that you get a fair bit of O2 in your argon. That's why further 'scrubbing' is needed for ethanol, just like with your argon equipment.
Great video! Nice to see you again, Dr. Lincoln.
Fermilab, your channel rocks. Thanks guys, you fill my void with goodness.
That's a really cool use of the difference of chemical properties of argon and oxygen.
Good seeing you back Dr. Don! Fascinating story about Ar and neutrino detection! 💥💥👍👍
Soooo happy to find you still cared about us and hadn’t decided to followed the lead of all the good science jokes! No siree-Bob…huh, I mean Dr. Don. You’re no joke; and Subatomic Stories was the only good that came out of COVID.
Please do your best to rally the team and post as often as space-time allows; you are such a good teacher and
have the best, way coolest tee-shirts in the universe and Beyond…✨👨🏼🚀💫👨🏼🚀✨Many thanks!
I love that a sabine video pop up before this one talking about how formilab spent 2 billions ofor this and the result might not tell something really valuable.
But from engineering point fo view regarding doing this is interesting.
Lets see what are the results out of this
Cranks gotta crank, what can I say?
The result won't tell us what the hype articles say, but it's still valuable science. She said she's not against doing this kind of science, especially since it's the U.S. spending the billions, not Germany.
@@yeroca tbh I haven't watched her video because while she started out OK back in the day I decided to curate a bit when she transitioned into a salty has-been.
Then again she is not the only science communicator who devolved into being just another youtuber
@ Thanks for your comments. She can work out solutions to GR, and understands quantum mechanics very well (as well as what's wrong with its current state), so she's not your average youtuber. But I get that she can come off as caustic and a naysayer if you watch only selected videos. She's also got quite a number of positive science and tech videos as well -- even giving Stephen Wolfram's view of the Universe a "he might be onto something", which at this point is still quite speculative.
Anyway, there are plenty of science communicators to choose from on YT, so we all have our picks.
I prefer videos from people who actually do stuff rather than videos from people who just complain about what other people do.
I like that idea. Thank you Dr. Don, you are one of the best in my book
Amazing ❤❤❤
Another great episode Don.
Yes, I want more of this. Both future videos you mentioned, please!
Another excellent video! Thank you for what you do.
I recently got your book (after watching your videos for years) so I'm looking forward to reading it!
Thanks. Fun to know.
Awesome 👌
This is my most favorite man of UA-cam
Thanks, Dr. Lincoln, for a great talk! Feel free to stick to metric units in these talks. Anyone who cares enough to learn about argon detection of neutrinos will be fine with it. Keep these talks coming, I love it!
Fermilab is sponsored by people who care about non metric units, and you care enough to let him do his thing
An excellent video. Very interesting to see the use of distillation to separate argon from the mixture of argon, nitrogen and oxygen. Under extreme conditions, like very high temperatures or pressures, argon can form some compounds with fluorine, such as argon fluorohydride (HArF).
I would love to see a deep dive video on the argon production, showing the various stages of production in action. Learning about how those issues of fighting contaminants and losses are accomplished would be worth including as well.
Awesome! My favorite presenter is back
Yes we would enjoy a video on Argon, thanks for asking!!!!
Thank you for the video.
The shear fact this is possible blows my mind.
What is the storage tank made from? You would imagine that the walls of the storage tank could be a source of contamination.
It looks like it is gold plated. I don't know if it actually is.
with liquor distillation, everything boils at the same temperature (around 95C for most fermentations) , but in different proportions, isnt it the same qith liquid air ?
Alcohol / water mixture has a weird phase recursive phase diagram.
It’s more similar to distilling oils with distinct boiling points (but random uncertainties for individual molecules).
I used it as a welding atmosphere for years, very good for not reacting with molten metals.
TIG welding was briefly shown. That process would use the most argon. MIG will use different gas blends including argon and stick welding uses no gas
Looking good doc!
Shouldn't DUNE detector use large amount of spice and heavily mutated person for operation?
The argon must flow
@shadowdagger2 dammit that's what I wanted to say!
No, you heard him, just Argon.
Big idea, big work.....
Any help from Argonne National Laboratory
3:48
Fascinating vid. It would have been interesting to mention how they're going to keep all that LAr cold in the detector.
Super fascinating. I don't know why, but having a 1 meter sealed, plexiglass cube filled with argon gas would be a fun curios to have in my home.
Yes, I would be very interested in a video about the different kinds of matter used in different kinds of Neutrino detectors.
It always confused me why on uses this and the other uses that.
Nice video! Now I wanted to know how a person sounds after inhaling Argon.
Old production chemist here. I was literally yelling "the oxygen has too much electronegativity!" at my screen and woke up my wife. Finally a video where I'm thinking "duh" the whole time instead of rewinding to grok physics concepts.
This is done every day producing liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen. Depending on the use, the argon may also be separated and sold for welding.
Back in the late 1960s, I needed very O2-free N2 and Ar for some experiments. I dissolved aluminum in silver metal and made it into a steel wool-like material. Used this to make a filter operating at about 250ºC. The O2 would dissolve into the sliver and react internally with the aluminum, forming aluminum oxide but not passivating the surface as the diffusion rate of the O2 atoms was much faster than the aluminum atom in the silver matrix. I used a 40 ft GC with ultra-pure He carrier gas diffused through glass. I still had negative peaks with a tritium ionization detector, indicating I was several hundred times lower O2 than the carrier gas standard. This could be an actual use for this technology. It was more pure than I really needed.
Nice
Awesome, in general and I never thought about filtering the Argon or other inert gases through a reactive metal filter to purify. About obvious if thought about, though never have. Neat. Interesting is many do not think about mining air. After seeing the towers that do, I have always thought that is the coolest mining operation. 🙂 Literally temp wise and in awesome scale.
I'm slightly disturbed that the engineers aren't wearing SCBA when working in an enclosed space with lots of high density inert gas.
Maybe it's just a promotional video, or some stock footage, but it's still scary.
If that's what they're actually doing, perhaps point out how dangerous it is at the next meeting?
Thanks for your concern! To clarify, the detectors for LBNF/DUNE are still under construction so there is not currently any argon (or other high-density gas) present at LBNF/DUNE. We’re very careful about safety protocols on site, and the safety of our engineers is of paramount importance.
@fermilab thanks for letting me know. I spent a good few years in the breathing equipment industry and I find heavier than air inert gas absolutely terrifying! You're dead long before you can don breathing gear. Really very dead, as it strips the oxygen out of your blood and resuscitation doesn't generally work. (I know someone who tried and couldn't bring them back) It's so fast that the normal practice of putting emergency breathing equipment on the wall ready for an emergency is far far far too slow. It pools so you can just walk down stairs and die. There's no odor, no smoke, no warning. Even if there are low oxygen alarms, by the time you walk 10 steps to the breathing gear, you won't know what to do with it. Then you collapse on the floor and that tempts others in to try to rescue you, and they die too.
Can you edit your post and not use the acronym, or write out what the acronym means?
@@XEinstein Sure! Sorry about that.
Self Contained Breathing Apparatus. Generally a full face mask and a cylinder of compressed air (though there are variations). To use you open the valve on the cylinder and put the mask over your face and inhale. That starts the air. It's provided at a slightly higher pressure than what's around you, so any leaks, leak out. Then you put the head straps over your head and tighten, then put the cylinder on like a back pack.
Almost every industrial work space that handles poisonous, flammable or oxygen deficient materials will have them, but in most cases they sit on the wall in a box, ready to go. That's because in most cases you can tell instantly that something has gone wrong and can take one off the wall and put it on.
If you want to see one Dräger, Scott and MSA are popular brands. I can't mention what to do with that information on here, but I'm sure you know how to find out more.
SCBA is scuba but not underwater
In the process of converting Argon back to a gas and then into a liquid underground, how do they prevent recontamination. Could the pipes alone potentially contaminate the Argon?
Yes. At this level of sensitivity to contaminants tubing can release dirt, oil and most problematic O2.
Certainly. That's why the machinery will contain contaminant filters and they will circulate it constantly.
And that’s why the pipes are chemically cleaned to remove oxides and other contaminants.
*The* opening/closing cards!
We still use feet, inches, and miles in the UK every day, and we always will I think. These words to describe distances are far better than metric words which are too long and the spelling is difficult. We do use metric for important stuff like science, construction, labels. e.g. a tennis court net is 3 feet high in the middle which is much easier than saying it is 91.4 centimetres.
In the future you can just head down to your local convenience store to pick up thousands of tons of liquid argon.
I’m sure that in the future, thousands of tons of extremely pure liquid Argon will be available in every corner drugstore, but in 2025 it’s a little hard to come by.
@@justinbeere Try asking the libyians
In the year 2000 (hat tip to Conan O'Brien) we will all have massive neutrino detectors under our houses because they will be used for a global internet where data is transmitted by neutrino beams through the Earth. Mark my ridiculous words: it will happen. But yeah, no.
Argon is collected the same way as Hard Liquor and Petroleum Products !!! Man, I would love to have a job at Fermilab.
The popular standard unit for large liquid volumes is the Olympic swimming pool. By my figuring, we get 20 of them here.
More please
What's the diference of this detector with the ones that uses water and ice, like the antarctic ice cube?
there they try to detect the photons created in an interaction
Disclaimer up front The following answer is based upon incomplete information.
Based upon the little bit that he talked about the method of detection in DUNE and the little bit I have read about the water-based detectors, the latter detectors work by detecting Cerenkov radiation formed when neutrinos knock electrons out of orbit and they travel through the water faster than the speed of light in water (which is not as fast as the speed of light in vacuum), whereas the DUNE detector will directly detect the electrons knocked loose by high-speed electrons, which will work even if the electrons that knocked them loose were too slow to make Cerenkov radiation.
But don't consider this an authoritative answer.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio This answer is correct. In addition, the exact details whereby the electrons are collected provides for a significantly more precise calculation of the path of the high energy particles, compared to the Cerenkov radiation.
On top of that, argon is heavier than water, which makes it a denser and more effective target.
@@drdon5205 I didn't think about the liquid density. In principle, krypton or xenon would be even better, but they are just too insanely expensive for only a modest improvement in performance (unless the greater atomic weight yields some kind of better-than-linear improvement)..
That shirt gave me a smile (depressed and disabled). Thank you.
5:09 does this conveniently also leave liquid oxygen that can be marketed as industrial or medical use gas?
It’s interesting that they actually raise the temperature to distill out the gases. I initially thought they might lower the temperature until they condensed out of the air. What is the advantage of raising the temperature instead of lowering it?
Easier to control
Great video. Argon is used in an instrument called an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICPMS) which I have some experience in. For strontium isotope analysis, krypton was an interferrent. I looked into inert gas getter pumps for removing it but the krypton was not reactive enough. I think that is the technology you refer to using Cu metal.
Also is it worth trying to sequester the CO2 you remove? I calculate ~3000 metric tons; not a lot on the global scale but perhaps worthwhile. I'm retired now so check my math!
thanks, Don
Interesting but I was hoping for information about the pumps and chillers.
Does the container have to be sealed and pressurized to keep oxygen and nitrogen from mixing with the purified argon?
At 6:25, an opaque glass is not just milky in color, but it should blur the image.
Use Argon in a heat pipe for superconductor cooling.
Can you tell how do you calculate purity of Argon? How do you know it got that purity level? Do you use spectrum analysis for that?
It's quite amusing to us Left-handers that neutrinos are left-handed!
yes
Love it
My guess on purifying Ar.
Current. To attract and remove the O2
I imagined a concrete pad with ports like a gas station, and an argon truck hooked up to it just like a gas tanker at a gas station. And they just kind of dumped it in, down long pipes in the ground until it reached the tank far below. Sure, a bunch would evaporate as the tank cooled down, but just dump in more to top it off occasionally. That's not right at all, turns out.
very curious topic, thanks for explanation
To Dr. Don & anyone who reads this,
- Singularity is not quantum. It is in fact opposite of quantum.
- Singularity itself does not experience space at all just like photons don't experience time.
- Inside singularity the Gravity, Entropy are both 0 and there is no degree of freedom.
- "Quantum world experiences more Space whereas Cosmic world experiences more Time."
- The time we experience is actually Time Dilation and the space we experience is in fact Space Dilation.
- Quantum particles even though separated in space are not separated in time. They are in fact very closely entangled in time and experience time together irrespective of their position in space.
- Time also expands just as Space expands.
- Even though fabric of spacetime is one but an objects behavior inside spacetime is resultant of its combined motion in Space & Time separately.
- Gravitational waves are nothing but result of change in location of center of mass.
I can prove every sentence mentioned above without breaking a single proven physics.
There is typically a lot more water in the air than you estimate, unless you're in arid regions.
Water freezes out very rapidly as soon as you start chilling air.
Carbon dioxide follows.
As an engineer I'd quite like to know how many MW or GW DUNE needs to consume to produce the 70 tons of Argon and then get it down to the detector. Must be massive.
Question. What difference would there be between using Argon and Helium? How would temperature changes in the gas effect neutrino detection?
Cost and cost
@iHaveOneOfEach i wss thinking of scientific differences. And yeah Helium is getting too expensive.
Density. Argon is simply heavier, meaning more interactions per volume.
@@drdon5205 Yes, I get that. What else? :)
@@Christopher-b1p Well, that's the big thing. Argon also ionizes more easily and scintillates, both of which are detection mechanisms.
But it's the density thing that matters most. Krypton or xenon would be better, but they are way more expensive.
Does any part of the Dune detector need to be in a vacuum?
I can't remember where I heard it, but during a supernovas core collapse there's so many neutrinos that the outward pressure applied by them exceeds the force of gravity or something?
Don: How does someone get that much argon? Because I said so!
"How does someone get that much Argon?" Did you try Temu? Or maybe Ebay?
1:21 Argon is fairly heavy as atoms go?? It's only 18 on my periodic table? Did I miss something?
It's true, Argon doesn't make your voice funny.
It makes your voice scary!
Don't try this at home though, unlike Helium, Argon is heavier than air so you could suffocate on it... Probably why it wasn't demoed in the video. On another note, fantastic video!
You can suffocate on helium too. IIRC, during a helium shortage the Party Store started selling helium mixed with enough oxygen so people wouldn't suffocate.
Argon doesn't really change your voice pitch, as it is about the same atomic mass as N2.
If you really wanna channel James Earl Jones, you want Xenon, which IS much denser than air.
Best to experiment with this with your torso upside down.
I can feel the neutrinos blasting through me!!!
FERMI FOREVER
Was it necessary to inhale the helium balloon to make this video? Yes, it was.
I thought the joke was that he inhaled argon instead of helium
Awsome❤
Theoretical physicists: - I have an idea!
Engineers: - Oh sh**, here we go again...
If a light particle doesn’t experience time when it travels, should’t its distance shrink to cero?
Using Ronique-thermoelectric cooler as first stage
Amazing, can you add H2 gas to form H2O if any O2 is left?
And then you get ice that is almost impossible to remove.
thanks
Great bideo
I'm glad I found at least one physicist who likes engineers, lol. The moral of the story is: if you're an engineer and you hang out with physicists on Twitter, don't tell them you're an engineer!
I think your problem there might be that you’re on twitter
well done - you need a ballroom for all that argon....Argon Ballroom.
I tried to explain this in court: I was no drunk but my drink was
I feel like turning things into neutrinos, "just because we can", is a something of a waste of potential energy.
We know that neutrinos don't interact with a whole lot, and it's very hard for them to be used to combine other particles to make a larger particle. This means that this energy is almost entirely lost once it gets released.
The universe would eventually dissolve into a sea of other neutrinos as time goes on. Some may still interact with other neutrinos, but they'll largely not be doing anything at the end of time. The universe's total potential energy will be locked inside the neutrinos, until such time as they destabilize and return their energy to the background field.
In other words, breaking things down just because we can only means that a small amount of that energy is permanently unrecoverable.
Although there is a lot of matter for us to play with, and we, ourselves, could never hope to use it all, we would still be wasting energy for the sake of amusement.
Me, snorting commercial Argon: "Eh, it's just not pure enough. Does Donghua Jinlong do Argon?"
This is something I can relate to! I harvest air every day. 😛
Former chem engineer here. How are you going to get the air out of the detector chamber so that it doesn't contaminate the pure Ar you put in? Pulling a vacuum on a large chamber can be difficult and would require it to be built to hold back the pressure of the atmosphere, otherwise the chamber would implode. My guess is that the DUNE engineers will partially remove the air with vacuum pumps and then break the partial vacuum with pure Ar. They'll need to repeat this vacuum-Ar cycle several times to remove enough O2 to avoid contaminating the Ar. Isn't engineering fun? Now, before you remove the air, how do you clean the chamber? ...
Yep