Capturing the Speed of Light

Synopsis: MIT Researchers capture the speed of light on camera. Able to take a trillion frames per second, this camera, developed by researchers at MIT, is capable of capturing light travelling from one point to the next. Is it the world’s fastest camera? Actually it’s described by its creators as ‘the world’s slowest fastest camera’. As it can only record in two dimensions and only one of these is spatial (the other is time), the scene must be captured from a number of angles to build up a multidimensional, moving image. This means that, although the timescales being captured are on a phenomenally small scale, the time it takes to actually capture all the necessary data can be as much as an hour.
The camera allows researchers to analyse how light scatters, with applications in material analysis and medical imaging.
Additional test footage from the camera, visualising light over a fruit, is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9RbLLYCiyGE and a laser pulse shooting through a bottle and visualized at a trillion frames per second is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fSqFWcb4rE&feature=player_embedded
Language: English
Country: United States
Year of release: 2011
Year of production: 2011
Subjects: Physics; Technology
Keywords: cameras; high-speed photography; light; speed of light

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