The Big Bang
Cardiff University tasked us with manufacturing four large Single Crystal Silicon Lenses. They are to be used in collaboration with The Simons Observatory, an $80m experiment based in the Atacama Desert, Chile.
Their goal is to look at the very earliest point of our universe’s history, just a fraction of a second after the “Big Bang”. The purpose is to investigate signs of “Cosmic Inflation”, a fundamental prediction of the “Big Bang Theory”.
The lenses form the core of a Two-Lens Refracting Telescope and are cooled to -272°C(1-Kelvin). Two of the telescopes are being provided by the UK to complement three similar telescopes from the US and one from Japan.
The photo shows three of the Telescopes behind their ground shields on the Atacama Plateau.
The lenses took over 100+ hours each to manufacture and required extensive inspection including our cutting-edge CMM. We are very proud of the lenses we produced and are waiting with bated breath to hear if we have been a part of discovering some of the many secrets hidden in the depths of our universe.
#CardiffUniversity #TheSimonsObservatory #AgateProductsLtd