LogIn"It's not only fast enough to watch light move, it's fast enough to see the past."
Brian Haidet, who holds a PhD in Materials Science, previously created a camera capable of capturing one billion frames per second and worked over the past year to refine that design. This new camera consists of one mirror, one lens, two tubes, a cable, "one of the weirdest camera flash bulbs probably ever built," and "a few hundred lines of Python" and is capable of capturing two billion frames per second.
Aimed at a laser pointer, the camera can film a beam of light as it glides between mirrors, with its speed changing depending on the camera's position relative to the laser. The catch: Brian's camera records only one pixel at a time. To create a full video, he repeatedly points the camera in different directions and then stitches all the individual captures together.
AlphaPhoenix
The video above dives into the setup and Brian's investigation of an unusual quirk of the speed of light. If you want to explore further, he has three more videos about the 2-billion-frames-per-second camera, and likely more are on the way:
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