World's Fastest Film Camera

A research group has developed a camera that can film at a rate equivalent to five trillion images per second, or events as short as 0.2 trillionths of a second. This is faster than has previously been possible.

The new super-fast film camera will be able to capture incredibly rapid processes. Image credit: tasnimnews.com (CC BY 4.0)

The new super-fast film camera will therefore be able to capture incredibly rapid processes in chemistry, physics, biology and biomedicine, that so far have not been caught on film.

To illustrate the technology, the researchers at Lund University have successfully filmed how light -- a collection of photons -- travels a distance corresponding to the thickness of a paper. In reality, it only takes a picosecond, but on film, the process has been slowed down by a trillion times.

Currently, high-speed cameras capture images one by one in a sequence. The new technology is based on an innovative algorithm, and instead captures several coded images in one picture. It then sorts them into a video sequence afterwards.

The film camera is initially intended to be used by researchers who literally want to gain better insight into many of the extremely rapid processes that occur in nature. Many take place on a picosecond and femtosecond scale, which is unbelievably fast -- the number of femtoseconds in one second is significantly larger than the number of seconds in a person's life-time.

For the researchers themselves, however, the greatest benefit of this technology is not that they set a new speed record, but that they are now able to film how specific substances change in the same process.

The researchers call the technology FRAME -- Frequency Recognition Algorithm for Multiple Exposures.

A German company has already developed a prototype of the technology, which means that within an estimated two years more people will be able to use it. (Tasnim News Agency)

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