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Ultrafast Camera Records at Speed of Light

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) have developed an imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second--fast enough to produce a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a one-liter bottle, bouncing off the cap and reflecting back to the bottle's bottom.

As Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor in M.I.T.'s Media Lab, explains in the video below, a high-speed camera can capture the image of a bullet mid-flight. The M.I.T. camera can capture the movement of photons, which travel about one million times faster than bullets.


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The researchers use a titanium-sapphire laser as a pulsed light source and direct the beam using mirrors to a plastic bottle that helps illuminate the light. Their camera consists of an array of 500 sensors, each triggered at a trillionth-of-a-second delay, Media Lab postdoctoral associate Andreas Velten says in the video. The images are combined to get a complete movie of photon movement.

The researchers, part of the Media Lab's Camera Culture group, expect that such a camera could have practical applications in medical imaging, scientific and industrial research and possibly even consumer photography.

Image: Media Lab postdoc Andreas Velten, left, and Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar with the experimental setup they used to produce slow-motion video of light scattering through a plastic bottle.

Photo: M. Scott Brauer

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots.

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