Incredible footage has made it possible to watch the journey light, made up of the universe's fastest particles, as it travels throu...
Incredible footage has made it possible to watch the journey light, made up of the universe's fastest particles, as it travels through a bottle of diluted milk.
The mind-bending footage was captured in a new video from YouTubers The Slow Mo Guys in an episode of their 'Planet Slow Mo' series.
They used high-tech equipment created by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), which is claimed to be the world's fastest camera.
In the clip, a CalTech researcher reveals what it looks like when a laser beam travels through the water by taking 10 trillion images every second.
The camera, Dubbed T-Cup, was first unveiled in October of last year.
Postdoctoral scholar Peng Wang starts out by recording the speed of light at 100 billion frames per second.
At this rate, it takes a beam of light about 2,000 picoseconds to travel the length of an average water bottle.
A single picosecond amounts to about one-trillionth of a second.
To see the light as it speeds through the bottle, researchers diluted the water with a small amount of milk.
At a speed of 100 billion frames per second, the light is moving a million times faster than a bullet, according to the Slow Mo Guys.
The video then depicts what it looks like when the speed of light travels at 500 billion frames per second, or about 450 picoseconds.
Finally, Wang ratchets the camera up to its maximum speed of 10 trillion frames per second.
A camera then records the beam of light as it travels across a few millimeters of diluted milk.
The whole process takes about 50 picoseconds.
The camera is based on a technique called femto-photography.
Particles of light are converted into electrons as they pass through a narrow slit, which allows the camera to take images at 10 trillion frames a second.
CalTech hopes to one day increase the fastest speed of its camera to one quadrillion frames per second.
The technology could have huge implications for medical and scientific research.
Professor Liang, of the National Institute of Scientific Research, Quebec, said: 'It's an achievement in itself.
'But we already see possibilities for increasing the speed to up to one quadrillion (10 to the 15) frames per second.
'Speeds like that are sure to offer insight into as-yet undetectable secrets of the interactions between light and matter,' he added.
No comments