The Fastest Camera Ever Made Captures 100 Billion Frames Per Second 122
Jason Koebler writes A new imaging technique is able to capture images at 100 billion frames per second—fast enough to watch light interact with objects, which could eventually lead to new cloaking technologies. The camera was developed by a team at Washington University in St. Louis—for the team's first tests, it was able to visualize laser pulse reflections, photons racing through air and through resin, and "faster-than-light propagation of non-information." It can also be used in conjunction with telescopes and to image optical and quantum communications, according to lead researcher Liang Gao.
Don't tell Peter Jackson (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
What does Jackson have to do with camera technology? He only uses CGI.
He was adamant to use the 48 frames HD format in the Hobbit, i.e. more frames than the usual 24. It was a big discussion of whether it is better or not. I am sure there is an endless thread on Slashdot somewhere.
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't what? Can't what? Won't what?
faster-than-light propagation of non-information (Score:5, Insightful)
yup thats exactly how i feel
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
you know, love or something, it's the latest fad in the movies like Interstellar.
Re:faster-than-light propagation of non-informatio (Score:4, Interesting)
No, not love. I thought techies on a tech site would have learned something in physics class. What are they teaching these days, and is there an opening for roman_mir?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, if it isn't roman_mir, the guy who tries to trick people into reading his nonsense journal entries via URL-shorteners.
http://tinyurl.com/bylguza [tinyurl.com] = http://slashdot.org/journal/30... [slashdot.org]
Re:faster-than-light propagation of non-informatio (Score:5, Interesting)
Picture scissors. The edges come together as they close. So increase the size of the scissors, and the speed you close them. Eventually the "point" where the scissors come together will eventually go faster than the speed of light.
It's "real". It's visible. And it isn't mass, energy, or information.
If you don't like that, take a laser. Point it at a cloud. Move the light as fast as you can. The point of light (as seen as the reflection on the cloud) can travel faster than the speed of light.
Re: (Score:2)
what's the point of saying such in the article though?
is the article just trolling? since if the observed thing is defined like that you can "observe ftl" with a point and shoot.
Re: (Score:2)
It does at least usefully point out that though "something" is traveling faster than light, information, mass and energy can't.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, but you're only getting the information in the time it took for the light reflecting off the cloud to reach your eye, and that light was traveling at the speed of light (in medium). So you observed something traveling faster than light, but you only got the information at a speed slower than or equal to light.
Re: (Score:1)
the information of the light still travels at the speed of light, it simply is the point of origin is no longer able to send data wherever you point it in order for the destination dot to be shining on some parts of the clouds at a speed faster than light. so only non information of the point of reflection no longer is a solid continuous beam as light from the laser still travels at the speed of light, meaning if you were modulating data through the laser by making the arc points technically too far apart f
Re: faster-than-light propagation of non-informati (Score:2)
Actually, no. The point of light in the cloud will not move faster than the speed of light, as this violates the special relativity theory.
Please remember that pointing a laser beam onto a cloud is like transmitting information. For example, by turning the beam on and off ala morse code, a message is transmitted. So it cannot be faster than light.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was hoping anyone who felt informed enough to discuss the point would be informed enough to know the definition of "information".
The catch is that you can't receive or interpret that information FTL. I think what you mean to say is that information from the light source itself cannot propagate FTL, violating relativity.
Obviously. The "thing" that conveys information may travel faster than the speed of light, but the information itself can not propagate faster than
Re: (Score:2)
And the information about whether the beam was on or off will propagate at light speed.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
My favourite explanation uses shadows. Imagine a wall with a spotlight shining on it. A ball is thrown parallel to the wall, half way between the wall and the spotlight. The shadow that the ball casts on the wall moves faster than the ball due to parallax. If the ball were travelling close to the speed of light, the shadow would be moving faster than the speed of light.
Of course, a shadow is actually a lack of light. It has no mass, no energy, it isn't information, so the speed of light limit does not apply
Re: (Score:2)
But the light isn't moving, just the event horizon.
Re: faster-than-light propagation of non-informati (Score:2)
Other things can travel faster than light relative to each other, from your view point, but nothing can travel faster than light relative to you.
An obvious example, aim 2 torches at each other. From your viewpoint, the light approaches the light of the other torch at 2x light speed. There are many examples like that, and they don't break relativity.
Re:faster-than-light propagation of non-informatio (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine a powerful, hand-held laser that you can point at the moon and see the reflection. Point it at the far end of the surface of the moon. Now flick your wrist, sweeping the laser across the surface of the moon within 1/100th of a second. The reflected dot will _appear_ to move faster than the speed of light. That is, it will appear to move smoothly* across 3476km (the diameter of moon) of the surface in 1/100th of a second. The speed of light is 299792km/second, and the dot moved at 347600km/second. In other words, it appeared to have moved faster than the speed of light.
Actually, there's really no need to italicize the word appear, I guess. There is a dot and it is moving (even if you define it as a series of discrete reflections, they're all causally related). It's just not the kind of "thing" that can convey information. You can't encode any information in the movement that conveys information to an observer faster than the speed of light.
* You may need to use time-lapse video. I just used the moon as an example because it's concrete. If the moon were larger and farther, the sweeping motion of your wrist could be slower.
Re: (Score:2)
Why can't you encode information by changing the speed at which you flick your wrist? At one wrist-flick speed, the dot travels at one multiple of the speed of light; at another wrist-flick speed, the dot travels at a different multiple. The receiver tracks the dot and decodes the speed changes into bits or other representations of information.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For a receiver situated on the moon, limited by the speed of light between him and his tracking devices (which are also situated on the moon), this part gets a little tricky, doesn't it? (i.e., "tricky," I mean "impossible.")
Re: (Score:2)
What are you seeing from the earth, then? Are you seeing the laser travel across a fake moon? Where exactly is that fake image of the moon, and why can't the moon see it too from its side? From the moon side, the dot across the fake surface will also travel faster than the speed of light.
Encode information in the multiple of the speed of light that the dot (wherever it is) moves.
Re: (Score:2)
" Nothing moved faster than the speed of light in order to make this happen, no matter how fast the "dot" appeared to move"
And yet the dot can be seen to move faster than the speed of light allows, across the surface of the moon. If the receiver on the moon is looking at the laser, at some point along the laser it will see it moving faster than the speed of light.
Encode information in changes of a multiple of the speed of light. Both sides will see the dot moving faster than the speed of light, at some poin
Re: (Score:2)
" Nothing moved faster than the speed of light in order to make this happen, no matter how fast the "dot" appeared to move"
And yet the dot can be seen to move faster than the speed of light allows, across the surface of the moon. If the receiver on the moon is looking at the laser, at some point along the laser it will see it moving faster than the speed of light.
Encode information in changes of a multiple of the speed of light. Both sides will see the dot moving faster than the speed of light, at some point along the laser beam.
That is merely the viewers lack of understanding that it is not a single dot moving, It is actually a serious of reflections, each completely separate with Zero movement except along the path to and from the moon. You may as well point the laser and one spot, turn it off and point it at a spot on a billion miles away and say, look I invented warp speed. The dot hasn't moved, it is a different dot.
Re: (Score:2)
From your link:
So, you predict the wave will break at point B. But why can't you manipulate the waves so that one part is traveling faster or slower? Then you
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You can, but you're sending information from yourself to the moon. If there are two communication stations and you flick your dot between them, they can't communicate with each other using the dot.
Re: (Score:2)
Say you entangle two particles, and separate them by a long distance. You measure your particle, and know what the other particle will read when it is measured. You now have information on what the other side will see, when they measure the particle.
If you also know some other things about the other side, that it's a deterministic computer, say that will execute a certain action upon reading a "1" and another action upon reading a "0", you now know what the computer at the other side is doing, after you've
Re: (Score:2)
In the classic case where Alice and Bob each have one photon of a previously-entangled pair, once Alice measures her photon, she knows what Bob will see. If there is a deterministic process in place that Bob follows upon measuring his photon, Alice now knows what Bob will do. She can prepare accordingly. She has gained information by measuring her photon; she knows what the other measurement will be. In the scenario mentioned, she knows what will happen across the universe, faster than she could otherwise k
Re: (Score:3)
Alice now knows what Bob will do.
No, she only knows what Bob has agreed to do, because she agreed it with him while they were in causal contact. This is not the same as knowledge of what Bob will do. For all Alice knows, Bob could have had a heart attack last night, or his equipment could be faulty, or he might just decide to be contrary and not do what's been agreed just to prove to Alice that no information has actually exceeded the speed of light.
You're confusing the common-place meaning of "know" (as in, "I know my husband is working l
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like you could replace the entangled particles with a pseudo-random number generator and get the same result.
You can't say for sure that the other party acted on the result of the particle/PRNG though. You can predict with a high degree of accuracy, but something could have changed (maybe the power went out, or the other side decided to change what happens when it reads a 1).
Re: (Score:2)
There is actually nothing which travels. Imaging you turn on lights one-by-one in a chain of lights. It would appear as if the light moves. Ofcourse this apparent movement can be made to be faster than the speed of light.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would say there is nothing which moves - atleast nothing physical. There are *different* things happening synchronized in a way that there is the appearance of motion. But talking about "motion" depends on an observer who synthesizes these different events into a motion of a single logical object. Similar to how a mouse pointer moves on a screen. Nothing actually moves. This is simply an illusion, not "propagation of non-information".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've tried, but I can't actually work out what you're disputing in Uecker's comments.
It's real. It's tangible. It's measurable.
What is? What's measurable about whatever it is?
Re: (Score:2)
If you can't understand what I'm disputing in his comments, read my comments he replied to and tell me what he's disputing. If that's confusing, go up a few levels to my original comment, and his original objection, and tell me what he's objecting to in that one.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, I try again.
He claims that a moving non-object (a shadow, a reflection of light, or a mouse cursor) isn't real. They are real.
Of course the reflections are real. The movement is not real.
They can be seen, they can be measured and defined. And they can move faster than the speed of light.
They are real, but the movement is not. There is no movement of anything - because the reflections you see at different times are different reflections. They are just synchronized in some way to make it appear as there were moving - in other words: it is an illusion. Different things appearing at different places at different times is not movement. Do you know the story of the Hare and the Hedgehog?
Re: (Score:2)
Fastest, ehh? (Score:4, Informative)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Re:Fastest, ehh? (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I highly recommend watching if you haven't already.
Re:Fastest, ehh? (Score:5, Informative)
The MIT camera doesn't capture that many frames pr second. The video they create show a trillion frames per second, but it's created from a gazillion movies of identical light pulses.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but black and white (Score:1)
and 180 x 96 picture elements. Wake me up when it's 4k rez.
Re: (Score:2)
Without you tech snobs, they'd simply never recoup R & D expenses.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That gets you 345,600 pixels. I think you meant 20*20 (22*22 gets you even closer to 4k).
Re: (Score:2)
Even given your extremely low res in b/w, I make that 196TB per second.
Since I can't find any source for your specs and the sample videos are clearly not black and white, I presume you're joking.
If it's just grayscale that they've coloured in later, that's 1.5PB per second; full RGB 4.5PB/s.
These are all under-estimates, too, since it looks like the res is much higher than your 180x96.
What sort of transmission / storage tech are they using? Electrons do
Re: (Score:2)
They acquire only for a very very short lapse of time (in the order of a ps) and perform compression before the acquisition (compressed-sensing).
They cannot record longer than this because of how slow the sensor in the back of the streak camera is.
Re: (Score:2)
The trick is slowing light down to the speed of an unladen swallow
Re: (Score:2)
But of course a superluminal swallow cannot carry information. You'd need a pair of entangled swallows.
Re: (Score:2)
Does information weigh more or less than a coconut?
Re: (Score:2)
So, about 25 MPH [wolframalpha.com] (that's 40 km/h or 11m/s for the rest of you). First Harvard and Rowland got it down to 17 m/s and then Lene Vestergaard Hau figured out how to stop and restart it entirely.
TL;DR: Mission accomplished. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The trick is slowing light down to the speed of an unladen swallow
African or European?
"Non-Information"? (Score:4, Funny)
"faster-than-light propagation of non-information" -- Politicians will looove that technology
Re: (Score:2)
"faster-than-light propagation of non-information" -- Politicians will looove that technology
Old news, Slashdot has already had this feature for a long time.
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't know that light took more than a month to get from news sites to me.
Femtosecond Camera is faster (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It wasn't 1 trillion in the same second. They had to image the action multiple times to get all the little slices of time to make up the animation.
This one, apparently, can image a single event in it's entirety.
Need bigger servers (Score:1)
Youtube is going to need to dramatically increase their server capacity. There's a lot of non-information posted there.
Interferometer (Score:1)
Time to repurpose the interferometer to try all the old experiments, especially Michelson-Morley one.
Great idea (Score:3)
But the costs for developing all that film would be outrageous..
That Frameskip and Motion Blur, though... (Score:2)
Billions of Frames per second versus trillions of cycles per second must make for quite the choppy video!
Faster than light?! (Score:4, Insightful)
If it can watch photons move, what exactly transfers the existence of those photons to the camera's sensor? some of the photons that refract from dust and air?
still not fast enough (Score:2)
to capture a politician being honest.
Finally (Score:2)
A camera that can catch a woman with her mouth closed.
Riddle (Score:2)
It is said that "a picture is worth a thousand words".
How much does 100 billion pictures worth ?
Obligatory Vsauce (Score:1)