Space Exploration: "Designing the Retina for an Eye Towards the Past"
Dr. Marcel Bruijn - SRON (Netherlands Institute for Space Research), Utrecht, Netherlands
The ESA is working on several missions to study the evolution of the universe from the time of the Big Bang.
Approximately a billion years after the Big Bang, the emergence of self-gravity resulted in a hot and a cold universe. The XEUS telescope will investigate this hot universe by looking at the formation of the first black holes as well as galaxy clustering. Because hot matter does not emit visible light, this telescope will gather X-rays to investigate how the evolution of black holes is related to star formation as well as the creation of the first metal elements.
Dr. Marcel Bruijn is working on the design of some of the smallest components in this complex telescope, specifically, the pixels in the X-ray detector.