Cryogenics: A Wonderful, Terrible Liquid

Its atom contains only one proton and one electron, which makes it the lightest element known to science. It is completely colorless, completely odorless. And it is that ultimate simplicity that has earned for hydrogen some of the most sophisticated jobs in modern science. Refrigerated into a liquid state, hydrogen is helping physicists to peer into the heart of the atom, to trace the fleeting histories of the smallest building blocks of matter. Space scientists are depending on it to launch the Apollo spacecraft that will take the first U.S. astronauts to...

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