Smart X-ray Optics

x射线在很多方面对我们都很有用：它们可以用来观察各种各样的东西，包括人的内部，出于医疗原因，行李，出于安全目的，它们也可以用于治疗目的，比如杀死癌细胞。在另一个极端，天文学家发现x射线对于理解宇宙是无价的：因为光子能量如此之大，我们可以看到更深入的空间，因为我们需要更少的x射线才能从探测器获得合理的信号。x射线已经有了很多应用，但如果我们能正确地聚焦它们，就会有更多的应用。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。另一种把光看成波的方式，就像蓝光的波长比红光短一样，x射线的波长也比红光短得多。这种质量非常重要，因为如果你想提高测量或照射物体的精度，那么波长越短越好，就像数码相机的CCD上有更多、更小的像素，就能得到更清晰的图像一样。我们操纵可见光的能力相当不错；通常，我们能够制造出在“衍射极限”下工作的系统，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，而我们在x射线上还远远达不到。如果可见光光学系统和目前的x射线光学系统一样糟糕，我们几乎都会完全失明，而且还没有机会纠正它。x射线的高能特性也使它们更难处理，而且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，我们就能打开通向各种新科学和技术的大门。*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*天文学家可以看到更深入的宇宙，从而更好地理解我们为什么在这里*许多领域的研究人员可以详细调查材料，从而增加知识，例如，疾病的原因和污染物的作用，仅举几例。很明显，我们需要一场x射线光学技术的革命！这个项目背后的团队拥有使用或可能使用x射线的各个学科的专业知识，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，并计划将其推进。但我们并不自满；团队中有一些新成员将完成/目前/我们所需要的大量专业知识。随着我们的想法成熟，我们完全有信心，其他研究人员和使能技术的用户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射线是在110年前偶然发现的，而且很快就被投入使用，但它们的全部功能仍有待探索。这个项目提供了机会，可能是第一次，实现和利用这一潜力。

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.