
Liquid Helium Pumps - HarryHirsch
http://www.barber-nichols.com/products/pumps/cryogenic-pumps/liquid-helium-pumps
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peckrob
The story of the hunt for liquid helium is one of the more fascinating and
colorful stores I've read. The blog Damn Interesting weaves the story pretty
well.

[https://www.damninteresting.com/absolute-zero-
is-0k/](https://www.damninteresting.com/absolute-zero-is-0k/)

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urig
Superbly written and very educational. Thank you for the link!

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kough
Not sure what prompted the post, but this reminded me of one cool use of
liquid helium: as a scintillator for particle experiments. Huh, I was going to
comment that SNO+ was planning on using a mix of liquid helium and argon for
its scintillator, but after checking the site it looks like they've switched
to linearl alkyl benzene
([http://snoplus.phy.queensu.ca/About.html](http://snoplus.phy.queensu.ca/About.html)).
Guess things have changed since 2012!

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maxander
Regarding what prompted the post, its probably not coincidence that the
subject of liquid helium pumps came up in a Worldbuilding Stack Exchange
question earlier today:
[http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/70788/how-c...](http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/70788/how-
could-a-submarine-like-vehicle-steer-and-propel-itself-in-a-superfluid) .

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ridgeguy
This company also made the turbopumps for SpaceX' Merlin engine [1].

[1] [http://www.barber-nichols.com/products/rocket-engine-
turbopu...](http://www.barber-nichols.com/products/rocket-engine-turbopumps)

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GregBuchholz
Would have been more interesting if we were looking at a liquid helium
fluidyne engine.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidyne_engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidyne_engine)

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aunty_helen
Is this theoretically possible? Wouldn't the 'working gas' liquify since
you're pumping LHe?

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ioquatix
There is a nice documentary about the search for Liquid Helium.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzYdo1xEbQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzYdo1xEbQo)

