That is amazing.

Medical imaging I can see; but the commercial applications he mentioned are a stretch. Why not just use CGI for that?

Just to clarify/echo the content of the video, they do not have a camera that is actually capable of taking 1 trillion frames per second. They are simulating that ability by having a laser continually shooting pulses of light, and then having the camera take a picture at a different slice in the travel of the photon by moving the mirror accordingly. Eventually the mirror captures every relevant interval of the path of the photon, composites the images, and generates an animation like the one with the soda bottle. Very clever piece of science and engineering.

Here's the thing in action </shameless plug>

That is pretty astonishing.

Lasers, light, and the universe... 2012 will be amazing as predicted. I'm glad Obama couldn't stop all progress, despite his efforts... right QM?

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/more-evidence-found-for-quantum-physics-in-photosynthesis.ars

Quantum coherence in antenna-protein chlorophylls from green sulfur bacteria:

"A team led by Engel and Shaul Mukamel of the University of California, Irvine analyzed the fluctuation of lasers as they passed through antenna proteins. Depending on how they shifted, the researchers could track what happened inside.

They found a clear mathematical link between energy flows and fluctuations in chlorophyll coherence. The link was so clear it could be described in derivative sines and cosines, mathematical concepts taught in college trigonometry."

"The mounting evidence that quantum effects can be seen in natural systems when excited by lasers is compelling" - Greg Scholes, University of Toronto biophysicist

*timeshift *slowmotion *photograhy

The universe is a hologram.

Now I want a TeraFPS video card for Christmas.

Such fast cameras could be used to determine which slit a photon goes through, no? I mean, in a single frame, not a composite shot, obviously. And used with a photon pump laser, not a photon clump.

fgh

>> ^messenger:

Such fast cameras could be used to determine which slit a photon goes through, no? I mean, in a single frame, not a composite shot, obviously. And used with a photon pump laser, not a photon clump.


The short answer, no. In short, you wouldn't be able to see a single photon, because it can only detect light that strikes the camera itself. the case you see in this clip is a pulse that is very dense with photons, and that are flying everywhere. Consequently, the light you see is not light that is actually going forward, and therefore, not light that is going through the slit.

If you positioned the camera on the other side of the slit, you would see light that has recently passed through the slit, but that wouldn't tell you anything about which slit or slits the photon passed through.

Also, its worth noting that monochromatic light does not need two slits in order to exhibit a diffraction pattern. However tech such as this could definitely be re-purposed similarly to an SEM in order to accept electron emissions rather than photons, which would make some interesting vacuum electron scattering experiments.

>> ^longde:

Medical imaging I can see; but the commercial applications he mentioned are a stretch. Why not just use CGI for that?


The applications for this are almost beyond imagining. This is a huge tool to all kinds of future research. The same way telescopes and microscopes can hardly be underestimated, this too is yet another giant leap in the tools available for researching how our world functions.

I am guessing even parallel GDDR5 memory is not enough to handle the bandwidth of 1,000,000,000,000 frames. I am curious mostly about how this is information stored.

I'd like to see them do this with a glass apple instead. Actually seeing light travel more slowly through the glass would be pretty cool.

Unfair! You changed the results by measuring it!

"Also, its worth noting that monochromatic light does not need two slits in order to exhibit a diffraction pattern."

@juliovega914, don't you mean coherent light instead of monochromatic?

>> ^Boise_Lib:

"Also, its worth noting that monochromatic light does not need two slits in order to exhibit a diffraction pattern."
@juliovega914, don't you mean coherent light instead of monochromatic?


Yes, I do, my bad. Coherent light is by necessity monochrome, but yes.

It didn't take a trillion frames in one second. It has an effective terafps framerate, but the photos were taken of different photon pulses over several minutes. It looks like a single photon pulse travelling slowly, but isn't, just like if you've ever seen the experiment with steadily dripping water and a strobe light where the water drops can be made to appear to slow down, hover in the air, and even travel back up.>> ^MonkeySpank:

I am guessing even parallel GDDR5 memory is not enough to handle the bandwidth of 1,000,000,000,000 frames. I am curious mostly about how this is information stored.