One of the most popular YouTube channels is the Slo Mo Guys, who film all sorts of actions with high-speed cameras, revealing details that normally escape our eyes. However, science needs even faster cameras, on the order of billions of frames per second. A recent study from three universities led to the use of a fantastic supercamera, so fast it can record the optical equivalent of a sonic boom.
The Photonic Mach Cone
The study of light is truly fascinating. Physics tells us we cannot travel faster than light, but measuring and observing its properties is something completely different. Of course, light doesn’t make it easy, and that leads to the development of surprising equipment with unprecedented detection capability and sensitivity. A group of researchers from Washington University (St. Louis), the University of Illinois, and Tsinghua University in China presented a study on real-time recordings of the scattering of a laser pulse through a “photonic Mach cone”. How did they record that? With a monstrous camera that can capture 100 billion frames per second.
Of course, the camera is only half of the equation. The term “optical boom” is not new. Many texts point to Cherenkov radiation, the famous blue glow observed in nuclear reactors. This effect requires light to become a little slower due to its movement through a medium, and what the scientists used was a dry ice mist inside a tube placed between two plates of silicon and aluminum oxide. The “camera” is actually a generic term for a complex system formed by three CCD cameras (one of them converts photons to electrons) and several filters. The final result is the first recording of a photonic Mach cone.
Potential Applications
What kind of applications can this technology have? Its creators suggest biomedicine first, and recording the “traffic” of signals in the human brain. Later, the priority will be to commercialize the cameras, so that other laboratories can have access to such an advance. 100 billion frames per second. Let that number settle in our minds...
