Researchers at the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre in Canada have created a new camera that’s really, really fast. It can take pictures at a speed of 156.3 trillion frames per second (fps), which is much faster than regular cameras on phones. These phones usually take pictures at a few hundred fps.
This super-fast camera can capture events that happen in femtoseconds. That’s a tiny unit of time equal to quadrillionths of a second. It’s so fast that it can show things that happen incredibly quickly, like chemical reactions or how light travels through materials.
The camera uses a special technique called compressed ultrafast photography (CUP). This technique allows it to capture images at such high speeds. The camera is called “swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography” (SCARF). It has the potential to help scientists in many areas, like physics, biology, and materials science.
With this new camera, scientists can study things that happen very quickly and understand them better. They can use it to see how cells divide or how molecules move. It’s like having a superpowerful microscope that can see things happening in almost no time at all. This could lead to many exciting discoveries in the future.
