{"id":11049,"date":"2016-12-27T05:48:14","date_gmt":"2016-12-27T05:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=11049"},"modified":"2017-01-20T06:41:30","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T06:41:30","slug":"silicon-pore-optics-stacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/silicon-pore-optics-stacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Silicon pore optics stacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_11050\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11050\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11050 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2-200x300.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg 467w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11050\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Credit: cosine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Stacks of carefully polished, coated and cut silicon wafers \u2013 normally used to manufacture integrated circuits \u2013 that will focus X-rays inside ESA\u2019s <a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Space_Science\/Athena_to_study_the_hot_and_energetic_Universe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Athena space observatory<\/a>, due for launch in 2028.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Invisible X-rays tell us about the very hot matter in the Universe \u2013 black holes, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Supernova\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">supernovas<\/a> and superheated gas clouds. But energetic X-rays do not behave like typical light waves \u2013 try to reflect them with a standard mirror and they are absorbed. Instead, X-rays can only be reflected at shallow angles, like stones skimming across water.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">That means multiple mirrors must be stacked together to build a telescope. ESA has developed \u2018silicon pore optics\u2019 to see much further into space than the ageing <span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><a style=\"color: #3366ff;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Space_Science\/XMM-Newton_overview\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">XMM-Newton X-ray observatory<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This approach is based on industrial silicon wafers, taking advantage of their stiffness and super-polished surface. Grooves are cut into the wafers to form pores through which the X-rays are focused. A few dozen at a time are stacked together to form a single mirror module. Many hundreds of these modules will be combined to form the optics of the X-ray mission.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stacks of carefully polished, coated and cut silicon wafers \u2013 normally used to manufacture integrated circuits \u2013 that will focus X-rays inside ESA\u2019s Athena space observatory, due for launch in 2028. Invisible X-rays tell us about the very hot matter in the Universe \u2013 black holes, supernovas and superheated gas clouds. But energetic X-rays do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",467,700,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2-200x300.jpg",200,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",467,700,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",467,700,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",467,700,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",467,700,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",467,700,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",380,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",467,700,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",400,600,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",327,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",240,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",43,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",467,700,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",64,96,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Silicon_pore_optics_stacks_node_full_image_2.jpg",150,225,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/category\/news\/space-news\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}