Smart X-ray Optics

X射线在很多方面对我们都很有用：它们可以用来检查各种东西的内部，包括出于医疗原因的人和出于安全目的的行李，它们也可以用于治疗目的，例如杀死癌细胞。在另一个极端，天文学家发现X射线对于理解宇宙是非常宝贵的：因为光子是如此的充满活力，我们可以看到更深的空间，因为我们需要更少的光子来从探测器获得合理的信号。X射线已经被用于许多应用中，但如果我们能正确地聚焦它们，可能会有更多的应用。X射线可以为我们做这些事情，因为单个光子比我们周围看到的可见光具有更多的能量，但是，像光一样，X射线是电磁辐射。另一种看待光的方式是把光看作波，就像蓝光的波长比红光小一样，X射线的波长也要小得多。这种质量是非常重要的，因为如果你想提高测量或辐射的准确性，那么波长越短越好/就像数码相机中CCD上的像素越多越小会给你带来更清晰的图像一样。我们操纵可见光的能力相当不错;通常我们能够制造出工作在“衍射极限”的系统，这意味着波长本身决定了我们能做得多好。这是你能达到的终极物理极限，而我们的X射线还远远没有达到。如果可见光光学像目前的X射线光学一样糟糕，我们几乎都将完全失明，没有机会纠正它。正是X射线的能量性质也使它们更难处理，我们产生和操纵它们的能力远远落后于可见光，尽管它们可能非常有用。如果我们能像处理可见光那样处理X射线，我们就能为各种新的科学技术打开大门：* 癌症医生可以瞄准并根除肿瘤 * 癌症研究人员可以更好地了解疾病的原因 * 天文学家可以更深入地了解宇宙，从而更好地了解我们为什么在这里 * 许多领域的研究人员可以详细研究材料，导致对例如疾病的原因和污染物的作用的知识增加，仅举几例。很明显，我们需要一场X射线光学技术的革命！该项目背后的团队拥有使用/或可以使用/X射线的学科的专业知识，包括制造业，医学和天文学，一些成员已经共同努力证明了一些新想法的可行性。我们从早期的工作中学到了很多东西，并计划将其向前推进。但我们并不自满;团队中有一些新成员，他们将完成我们所需要的大量专业知识。随着我们的想法逐渐成熟，我们有信心，其他研究人员和使用这种技术的人将从木制品中脱颖而出，包括机场安全、工业检查和芯片制造。尽管X射线在110年前偶然发现，并很快投入使用，但其全部功能仍有待探索。这个项目提供了一个机会，可能是第一次，实现和capatively在这一潜力。

X-rays are useful to us in many ways: they can be used to look inside all sorts of things / including people, for medical reasons, and luggage, for security purposes / and they can also be used for therapeutic purposes, such as killing cancer cells. At the other extreme, astronomers find X-rays invaluable for understanding the Universe: because the photons are so energetic, we can see deeper into space as we need fewer of them to get a reasonable signal from a detector. X-rays are already used in lots of applications, but there could be many more / if only we could focus them properly. X-rays are can do these things for us because the individual photons have more energy than the visible light we see around us / but, like light, X-rays are electromagnetic radiation. Another way to think about light is as waves, and just as blue light has a smaller wavelength than red light, X-rays have a very much smaller wavelength still. This quality is very significant because if you want to increase the accuracy with which you can measure something, or irradiate something, then the shorter the wavelength the better / in much the same way that having more, smaller pixels on the CCD in a digital camera will give you a sharper image. Our ability to manipulate visible light is pretty good; often we are able to make systems that work at the 'diffraction limit', which means that it is the wavelength itself which determines how good a job we can do. It is the ultimate physical limit that you can achieve, and we are nowhere near that with X-rays. If visible light optics were as bad as current X-ray optics, we would all be almost totally blind, with no chance of correcting it / yet. It is the energetic nature of X-rays that also makes them much harder to handle, and our ability to produce and manipulate them lags very significantly behind their visible light counterparts, even though they are potentially so useful. If we could handle X-rays at the level we can handle visible light we could open the door to all sorts of new science and technology: *cancer doctors could target and eradicate tumours*cancer researchers could gain a better understanding of the causes of the disease*astronomers could see much deeper into the Universe and so gain a better understanding of why we are here*researchers in many fields could investigate materials in fine detail, leading to increased knowledge of, for example, the causes of diseases and the action of pollutants,to name but a few. It is clear that we need a revolution in our X-ray optical technology! The team behind this project have expertise across the disciplines that use / or could use /X-rays, including manufacturing, medicine and astronomy, and some members have already worked together to prove the feasibility of some novel ideas. We have learned a lot from this early work, and hplan to take that forward. But we are not complacent; there are some new members in the team who will complete / for now / the enormous range of expertise that we need. As our ideas mature, we have every confidence that other researchers and users of the enabling technology will emerge from the woodwork, including airport security, industrial inspection and chip manufacture.Even though X-rays were discovered / by chance / 110 years ago, and they were very quickly put to use, their full capabilities remain to be explored. This project offers the chance, probably for the first time, to realise and capatilize upon this potential.