one trillion frames per second, so detailed it shows light itself in motion

[Ichingcarpenter]

transcript from the ted talk.




I present you a new type of photography, femto-photography, a new imaging technique so fast that it can create slow motion videos of light in motion. And with that, we can create cameras that can look around corners, beyond line of sight or see inside our body without an X-ray, and really challenge what we mean by a camera.



1:17
Now if I take a laser pointer and turn it on and off in one trillionth of a second -- which is several femtoseconds -- I'll create a packet of photons barely a millimeter wide, and that packet of photons, that bullet, will travel at the speed of light, and, again, a million times faster than an ordinary bullet. Now, if you take that bullet and take this packet of photons and fire into this bottle, how will those photons shatter into this bottle? How does light look in slow motion?



2:17
Now, the whole event -- (Applause) (Applause)



2:24
Now, remember, the whole event is effectively taking place in less than a nanosecond — that's how much time it takes for light to travel — but I'm slowing down in this video by a factor of 10 billion so you can see the light in motion.


2:41
But, Coca-Cola did not sponsor this research. (Laughter)


the video............... and link



http://www.ted.com/talks/ramesh_raskar_a_camera_that_takes_one_trillion_frames_per_second/transcript?language=en

[Warpy]

1. Too good not to link here

Some TED talks make it over to You Tube and some don't. This one did.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

5. saw this a couple of years ago when it first was published

and i have to say, i never get tired of nor fail to feel amazement at the technology and science required for this video to be created.

i LOVE his line about the bullet through the apple being a very boring movie if filmed at these frame-rates!

sP

[Warpy]

9. But state of the art when Edgerton did it

Now they're on to attophotography and have managed to photograph things like an electron bond. It's harder to relate to than the packet of photons going through the Coke bottle, but amazing to us geeks.

I wish Edgerton had lived to see this stuff.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

10. completely and totally cool in just about every way

seeing theory come to life (and be proven and strengthened) makes me tingle... sort of Isn't Edgerton the one who did the photography of the nuclear blasts? i guess i could google it...

sP

[F4lconF16]

11. Can you link to that?

I would love to read up on attophotography.

[Warpy]

12. It was early last summer

and it wasn't much of an article on the technique, just an announcement that the bonds had been photographed in motion for the first time plus an animated .gif.

I can't find the original article, sorry, just articles with still images.

[F4lconF16]

13. That's quite alright.

I was googling it and couldn't find anything--any idea where one is?

[Warpy]

14. No, not really, the journal was fairly obscure

and there was a blip of sorts on a mass site. "Attophotography" barely got a mention as the technique used.

Check out some of the stills, though, they look remarkably like those Tinker Toy models we all had to make in Chem 101, the geometry exactly as predicted.

But hell, I hate it when stuff disappears down the memory hole so quickly.

[F4lconF16]

15. Ah, well, thanks anyways. I'll be keeping my eyes open for it. Was it in 2013?

If so, was this it? You're right that it looks pretty close.

The original reactant molecule, resting on a flat silver surface, is imaged both before and after the reaction, which occurs when the temperature exceeds 90 degrees Celsius. The two most common final products of the reaction are shown. The three-angstrom scale bars (an angstrom is a ten-billionth of a meter) indicate that both reactant and products are about a billionth of a meter across.

I'm a little surprised that got as little attention as it did though--maybe the mainstream science media hasn't decided to blow it up yet?

[Warpy]

16. That was part of it but the whole business was in motion

It was hard to see, but it was there.

They're probably working on some sort of earth shattering presentation about it.

[marym625]

2. This is the coolest thing

Since sliced bread! Awesome! Thanks for sharing

[LifeLoveLib]

3. :-)

That's neat.

[Gin]

4. Fascinating!

Thanks for sharing.

Gin

[Hekate]

6. Femto-photography: dazzling! Nt

[srican69]

7. I have a problem ...

if a packet of photon can only travel a distance dx ... how are we able to observe the movement of the packet (the scattered beam) at distance more than dx away?

or Are we ( or the camera) just observing the phenomenon on a delayed basis?


Think about it .. By the time we capture the first frame of the laser bullet - the bullet might have already gone out the other end of the bottle?

[byronius]

8. The video presented is an amalgam of gigabytes of data -- so I think you're right; it's delayed.

Human eye sees, like, nothing.