Somebody made a ‘digital camera’ that may shoot at two billion frames per second

Brian Haidet, a scientist creating movies on YouTube below the deal with AlphaPhoenix, confirmed off a digital camera in a brand new video that can capture footage of a laser pointer on the pace of sunshine. The digital camera is an replace on a earlier design that might seize footage at one billion frames per second, but it surely comes with a significant caveat: it may well solely shoot one pixel at a time.

Haidet’s digital camera is made out of a gimbal-mounted mirror, two tubes, a easy lens, a lightweight sensor and a few Python code to tie all of it collectively. Pointed at a laser pointer, the digital camera’s in a position to seize a beam of sunshine at two billion frames per second, exhibiting it easily touring between mirrors, with speeds that change relying on the place the digital camera is in relation to the laser pointer. “Mild strikes about six inches, or 15 centimeters, per body of this video,” Haidet says. “This beam of sunshine is touring on the Universe’s pace restrict. Mild in any reference body won’t ever transfer any sooner or any slower than this pace.”

Whereas it is theoretically potential to create a extra conventional digital camera that may seize footage at two billion frames per second, as Haidet explains, you’ll be able to’t do it with the instruments most individuals have of their storage. His answer was to seize one pixel at a time, after which tile that footage collectively to create one thing viewable. In response to Haidet, “if all these movies are synchronized and we take many, many, many, one pixel movies, we will tile these movies subsequent to one another and play all of them again at the very same second and provides one thing that appears like a video.”

Whereas it isn’t the identical factor as a real two billion frames-per-second digital camera, “that is only a considerably costlier option to do it,” Haidet says, “and it actually would not get us any higher of a outcome.”