How do you make liquid helium?

It seems to be considerably more straightforward to make things 300 degrees warmer than it
does to make them 300 degrees colder. But in 1908, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
managed to cool helium gas down far enough that it turned into a liquid.

Helium condenses, or becomes liquid, at around 4 degrees Kelvin (4 degrees celsius above
absolute zero). If you cool it even further, to approximately 1.7 K, it becomes superfluid. So
how is it possible to make something that cold?

To condense nitrogen, you would normally use the Siemens cycle. This process begins with
the gas in question at A, where it is compressed (heating it). It then travels to B, a cooler. It
goes through C, a heat exchanger, where the gas further on in the cycle reduces the
temperature of the original gas. At D, the gas is expanded, which cools it down even further.
It then travels back to A through C, helping reduce the temperature of gas further back in the
cycle. This process usually repeats until the gas begins to condense (but not helium!).

However, the Siemens cycle is only efficient for high temperature gases. This is where the
Hampson-Linde cycle comes in. Once the gas is cold enough, it can be transferred from one
cycle to the other to be further cooled. The HL cycle is very similar to the Siemens cycle,
except for the inclusion of a Joule-Thomson orifice in place of the gas expander at D. This
makes the gas cool down even more than before, and is where the helium can finally begin to
liquify.

But alas! How is this so?

The Joule-Thomson effect states that when a (non-ideal) gas expands, it will cool down. A
Joule-Thomson refrigerator puts this effect to particularly good use. The high pressure,
warmer gas enters the refrigerator (D) and expands through its capillaries/pores. This cools it
down dramatically, and any liquid formed is collected at the bottom. The remaining gas, at a
much lower pressure now, is sent back through the cycle to cool down earlier gas in the heat
exchanger (C) and then repeats the process, cooling more each time, until most of it has been
condensed to form liquid helium. Success!

Liquid helium is very useful. It is most helpful in keeping superconducting components of

equipment cold enough to function; for example, components present in MRI machines and
the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Look at this PDF to get an even better idea of how J-T refrigeration works, complete with
diagrams. The above images originate from here.