April 25, 2018 X: X-ray Telescopes (X-rays are not just about seeing our bones).

NOTE: IMAGE FROM NASA’S CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY SITE (most other images of the moon or sky are the author’s)

All free energy in the universe comes as electromagnetic waves. The higher the wave frequency (the shorter the wavelength and the greater the energy transported), the more the waves affect materials they penetrate. X-rays are of such short wavelengths and high energy frequency that they can not only penetrate human tissues to reveal bone structures, but they can “see” more deeply into the cosmos than other EM waves.

There are many kinds of telescopes. As we described here under PERSPECTIVE, a telescope (experimental setup) uses the technique of diffraction (both outward and inward), along with the human eye (and brain), to collect more electromagnetic radiation (and more information) about something maybe too far away for us to see without it.

Astronomers use all kinds of telescopes to unlock the mysteries of our universe. The targets of the largest scopes are very large distributions of matter (either as atomized gases (possibly from superNOVAS, or highly gravitational masses (high-curvature troughs)). All telescope types pick up electromagnetic energy (energized energy packets that exhibit the aspects of particle and wave).

Light telescopes use lenses and mirrors to expand sources of the light spectrum (radiating light waves/light rays/photons), and then focuses them at a focal point. Because our first telescopes collected light from the cosmos, star types are named after the colors of the rainbow.

Radio telescopes use dishes (shaped like mirrors). Instead of keeping a smooth surface for reflecting light, the longer wavelength radio waves collected must have struts close to the size of the radio wavelength. Radio “mirrors” are fashioned out of dish-shaped latices.

X-rays telescopes collect much smaller EM wavelengths than both light and radio waves. While other scopes use reflection or refraction to a focal point before analysis of the image, X-rays are detected differently than other EM waves. They move through reflective and refractive surfaces. X-rays can reflect from a surface, but not in the usual way. X-rays are only reflected back toward a focal point by something called “grazing incidence,” when the ray hits a curved surface nearly parallel to a curved surface at each point of incidence. So cylindrical mirrored surfaces in this scope are nearly parallel to the direction of incoming radiation (see NASA site).

X-rays allow us to look deeper into the cosmos at gas clouds and supernovas many light years beyond our galaxy. The hotter, the more energy the celestial event, the more x-rays are produced. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has revealed black holes are at the center of galaxies. Stars in the galaxies are orbiting and dragged into these black holes (the densest forms of mass distribution in the universe). The detector has discovered tens of thousands of black holes in our galaxy’s center. To view what can be seen through this x-ray telescope go to the NASA site for the images.

When these scopes are on opposite sides of Earth the distance between our view of the universe (the distance between radio eyes) is the diameter of the Earth. We can expand our observations using our satellites. Though our targets move, we can expand our observations between our EM eyes to some 180 million miles (the diameter of Earth’s orbit). This helps with determining distances to Earth more accurately.

Our Experiment Analog:

Where, based on our experiments, do the potential targets around the relationship boundary that is our universe? First there are the troughs (negative amplification), the gravitational masses where information and energy is prevented from crossing because of the disadvantageous curvature there (In our expanding droplet the interfacial tension times the curvature will be strong enough to reject or damp out any external forces. Way out on the relationship boundary between these troughs (positive amplitude) the tension and curvature will go to zero and any location on the crest boundary may appear diffuse and any random perturbation will create a new boundary, depending on how statistically high the energy “leakage” is.