New superconducting X-ray detector is up to 1000 times more sensitive

Transition edge sensors are fascinating. You get single-photon sensitivity and some energy resolution at the same time.

Jeroen Belleman

There is more info on those here:

You have to get down to a few kelvin, which is out of reach for Peltier coolers.

Jeroen Belleman

I see -90C on youtube

I see no reason not to put more in series?

I have whole bunch of small Peltier elements from ebay.. Have only tried a few in series, makes nice voltage sources too.

Who knows, but I also have super cooler:

It was used to cool a superconducting filter for telecom towers. You can make liquid nitrogen, so rocket fuel with it too, This guy gave me the idea to buy one on ebay and try it:

Useful for anti-gravity experiments like this:

Home lab is cool

And we are having a heatwave here... Highest temperatures ever measured in the UK and France too. Code red here for tomorrow.

-40 C and I was walking in jeans going for a job application long ago.

But some people seem to be dying from +35 C

Peltier junctions are shockingly inefficient, and stacking them means having a lot in the first stage to get rid if the waste heat from a single second stage unit.

It's a Stirling engine.

If you have liquid nitrogen floating around, about 77K.

You have to be pretty unhealthy for 35C to kill you, but it can happen. Before global warming, cold snaps killed more vulnerable people than heat waves, but that's no longer true.