MIT Develops Camera that Can Shoot at 1 Trillion FPS

Think that fancy new DSLR of yours is impressive for being able to shoot photos at 12 FPS and video at about 30 FPS? Well, I’m here to rain on your parade. A team of researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have created a camera that can capture images at a trillion frames-per second. You read that right: one trillion – as in 1 Million x 1 Million.

The need for a camera like this and the tech behind it goes far over my head, but in essence, a camera that can capture images at such a high rate of speed can give researchers a far greater perspective when looking at fast moving objects. We’re not talking baseballs knocked out of a field here, but things like photons. In one video, a researcher mentioned that while a fired bullet being captured on camera is difficult, photons can move a million times faster – a fact that makes the need for this kind of camera a little more obvious.

The technique behind being able to capture images at such high speed is called Femto Photography, and is made possible with the use of femtosecond laser illumination and detectors that are accurate to the picosecond (one trillionth of a second; about on par with my attention span). Because images can’t literally be saved to a computer at 1 trillion images a second, the technology features reconstructive techniques that help fill in the blanks and create a smooth recreation of the entire capture.

A lot more information can be seen at the URL below along with a handful of videos that show off the technology better and explain it to some extent. While you read that, I am going to go off and wonder what I’ve ever created that was so great.