A camera has been developed in the USA that can shoot 70 trillion frames per second. The new technology is to be used primarily in biochemistry and in basic physics.
If you were to be photographed and blinked by the new camera , the camera would take over a trillion pictures in this incredibly short moment. This example shows very well how fast the camera developed at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) really is.
Lihong Wang, professor of electrical and medical technology, and his team have developed an ultra-fast camera that can take up to 70 trillion images per second. This is so fast that it can even record light waves as they travel or molecules decay.
Laser pulses for one femtosecond
Wang describes the technology he and his team have developed behind the camera as compressed ultra-fast spectral photography (CUSP). In the detailed description in the journal Nature Communications , you can quickly see that the new camera is in many ways similar to older cameras developed by him. This includes, for example, a phase-sensitive device for compressed ultra-fast photography (pCUP), which can take a trillion pictures per second of transparent objects.
In the new CUSP process, a laser that emits ultrashort light pulses with a duration of only one billionth of a second (one femtosecond) is combined with optics and a very special type of camera. The optics break down the ultra-short laser pulses into even shorter pulses, each of which can generate an image in the camera.
Camera should be used in biochemistry and basic physics
According to his own statements, Wang can imagine using the new ultra-fast camera in areas such as basic physics, which he would like to miniaturize in the life sciences. “We envision applications in a variety of extremely fast phenomena, such as ultra-short light propagation, wave propagation, nuclear fusion, photon transport in clouds and biological tissues, and fluorescent decay of biomolecules,” added Wang.
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