There are times when you might wonder how those physicists seem to understand what they are doing, and how they managed to crack those arduous exams that revolve around speed of light, particles and stuff like that.
Well, here is an invention by some of the geeks at MIT Media Lab who have created a new imaging system that could actually acquire visual data at a speed of one trillion frames a second. Now, that is faster than capturing the image of a bullet that is shot through an apple. It is a virtual slow motion camera that can capture a photon’s movement in space.
The researcher who explains the pro0cess behind the mechanism seems to be really pleased with himself when he does so, and describes how a photon travels more than a million times faster than a bullet. The apparatus consists of a real camera, certain physics-related paraphernalia and of course a computer that processes these images. The camera is an array of 500 sensors which catches the light source. The light source is a titanium sulfide laser and the pulses are directed through the paraphernalia and the resulting is a single line of movement. When one looks at the video, it is difficult to comprehend how a light can be captured in slow movement so skillfully.
Such a camera can be used in scientific use, medical imaging and even consumer photography. The researcher again reiterates the importance of the apparatus by stressing (pun intended) on the role it can play in industrial imaging. Physicists are usually difficult to comprehend, and so are there experiments. You could read about what we wrote about the God Particle Not Showing Up. Take a look at the Modernist Cookbook which deconstructs haute-cuisine to a sub-atomic level. Such discoveries and inventions forge mankind to new levels of geekiness, I suppose.
