Camera Takes Pics at 1/6 Speed of Light “One Trillion Frames Per Second”

you read that correctly

The fastest camera in the world has been developed in Japan and it is insane.  And this has implications way beyond winning photo competitions.  Here is a bit on how the new trillion frame camera works:
When a crystal lattice is excited by a laser pulse, waves of jostling atoms can travel through the material at close to one sixth the speed of light, or approximately 28,000 miles/second. Scientists now have a new tool to take movies of such superfast movement in a single shot.
Can you imagine how fast that is?  We will be able to take such crisp photos of light that new properties of physics are likely to be observed.
Here is a bit more information from the invention:

Researchers from Japan have developed a new that can record events at a rate of more than 1-trillion-frames-per-second. That speed is more than one thousand times faster than conventional high-speed cameras. Called STAMP, for Sequentially Timed All-optical Mapping Photography, the new camera technology “holds great promise for studying a diverse range of previously unexplored complex ultrafast phenomena,” said Keiichi Nakagawa, a research fellow at the University of Tokyo, who worked to develop the camera with colleagues from an array of Japanese research institutions.

STAMP relies on a property of light called dispersion that can be observed in the way a misty sky splits sunshine into a rainbow of colors.
This is really incredible and more information can be found at the optical society website.  And we hope to see more progress and scientific benefit from this camera in the future.  There is also a related video enjoy!

thanks to the optical society for the info

reference to Nature Photonics, 2014



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