Visualizing Light over a Fruit with a Trillion FPS Camera, Camera Culture Group, Bawendi Lab, MIT

[@しろたま-f3q]

This light is constant velocity from every observation point... strange lol

[@mohamedqasem]

I've always want to see how light fills a room. This was just right. Ahhh! You just made my year. I love you guys.

[@chaoabordo]

I didn't think I would ever witness this. Amazing!!!

[@EnricoManuti]

OMFG this is so amazing! I've never seen anything like this! The colour of that vegetable is such a stunning one!

[@ultimateownage2]

I'm glad I lived to see this. Simply amazing.

[@mwilson14]

I would love to see this done on the two slot experiment. It would be amazing to have a visual display of both light and, somehow, fast moving particles up to the size of buckyballs traveling through crystal slots at 1 trillion FPS. I guess this could be considered a visual representation or approximation of 1 trillion FPS. Though not recording 1 trillion fps in the same manner as 60fps, it has application and merit in my book.

[@alexanderconde1477]

The sampling rate of the camera is lower than the rate of the light pulses. Sampling at a lower frequency than a target signal creates an effect called aliasing, that makes you think that your target signal has a lower frequency... like in this case....really nice trick :-), the same effect that we can observe in spinning wheels in old movies

[@mortenrobinson]

The light doesn't reach the camera faster than it travels through the scene. The flashlight-source is pointed in a specific direction. As the beam of photons travels through the scenery they interact with all the atoms, and some of the photons bounce of in random directions (all directions). What you see are the photons from the beam that get reflected back in the camera's direction.

[@jbrun009]

This is really cool, didn't have any idea how advanced these cameras have become! I wouldn't have expected to see something like this for another 20 years!

[@OliverJensen5115]

I don't know what impresses me more - that they can capture light moving across like that, or that they can flash light so fast that even going at the speed of light it looks like a very thin crescent. The flash looks about 1cm across, meaning they can turn a light on and then off again within one 30-billionth of a second

[@mohamedqasem]

I loved how the shadow slowly emerges.

[@Longest-Word-In-English]

How did they get a 1,000,000,000,000 FPS camera?

[@bigbezet]

They are not actually recording movement of light, they are visualising the movement. People need to understand this, because after reading the comments I'm under the impression that most people believe this camera can record the actual movement of a lightwave...

[@burnzoire]

@beeljr the camera doesn't record that fast, it just composites many takes to get this result - so you can't effectively film something moving like dust particles

[@PortlandLax]

Great video! I think it would be really interesting if you shot a video of the light moving through something like smoke so we could see it's actual path as it moves out from the source.

[@HaveFluFunPal]

That is just freaking AWESOME!!! Wave properties of light - in motion!

[@TinchoXII]

Holy crap... I never thought I would see this.

[@MatthewJumper]

Pretty awesome to see a shadow on the wall of an object that is no longer illuminated itself. Impressive demo.

[@uetzel]

it moves like a wave, but it's out of particles? shit is crazy!

[@omegamagna]

To all the people asking "that's it?" Let me explain to you the significance of this video.. For many years, one of the most debated topics in history was if a light was really a wave. This slowed down video PROVES that light is a wave. concluding a very very big subject in the physics field.

[@jenniferfama8802]

Thanks.

[@omegamagna]

Jennifer Fama your welcome :) glad to see people enjoy science.

[@JonathanLidbeck]

The first major proof that light is a wave actually occurred nearly 200 years ago, when an unintuitive effect predicted by the wave theory--the Arago spot, a bright point of light appearing in the center of the shadow of a circular object--was in fact observed. And to be precise... this video doesn't actually offer evidence toward either wave or particle theory, as each frame is an aggregate of many separate pulses of light, each one too faint to be observed. The combined effect appears as a wave but it could (in theory) be the light from millions of scattered particles.

[@omegamagna]

Jonathan Lidbeck well obviously it was enough to be observed here. sooo....

[@ChronicKPOP]

omegamagna this is not really an observation but a visualization. Observations should be done by observing, not constructing a visual representation of what it "could" be. If there was a single camera running at 1 trillion fps and a single beam was pulsed in the scene and the camera showed the light moving in and out of the scene.. sure, we could say we observed that light. but pulsing light and taking pictures at different times and compiling it... that's a visualization and open to all kinds of problems (meaning it may be totally off) albeit very interesting.

[@mandydax]

I didn't think a trillionth of a second was a huge deal until I remembered that light travels about a foot per nanosecond. So it propagates at 300 micrometers in 1 picosecond. That's about the thickness of 3 sheets of copy paper. Mind. Blown.

[@LostBeetle]

Never mind, I thought of it, it was kind of a dumb question. The light is emitted for 1 trillionth of a second, but it then continues to travel. But here is a more legitimate question. How can we see this happen when everything we see is light? The laser is fired and travels across the fruit, but in turn light must also travel to the lens. You are effectively seeing back in time, but slowing things down enough to see it happen, wouldn't this create an effect?

[@BrotherBrownMusic]

Watching this = Instant brain freeze through the time and space continuum... Hats of to all the engineers and phycisists at MIT for capturing this marvelous eyefest and sharing it with the rest of us !

[@cartman1041]

It's interesting to me how the light on the wall has a bright curved line and a lighter curved line inside it, the light behaving like the waves on the surface of water when you throw in a stone. Now I want to see the photon.

[@Spartan5487]

@MatthPeder its a pulse of light moving across the tomato. this is capturing video faster than the speed of light

[@remodeling]

Here is a quick explanation. A laser light is turned on, and the camera recording this process films at so many frames per second that when the video is slowed down you can actually see the movement of the lightwave instead of it appearing as a quick burst of light to the human eye. I hope that helps.

[@BlueBandit15]

What an absolutely amazing piece of video, I would have never imagine in my wildest dreams see this happen you just hear about it in the classrooms when its being taught to you but to actually see it happen is completely amazing

[@YesIamJames]

Didn't even know cameras like this existed, amazing!

[@mythofechelon]

@xGozzax Because the higher the frames-per-second, the lower the resolution has to be because no device has a bandwidth high enough to move that much data at any one time. It says it's in 1080p because that's what the video was produced in. It doesn't mean the video quality is actually 1080p. Think of it as having a larger cup to contain the same amount of water.

[@smpl90s]

@Silverlance360 With any high speed camera, you need to play recordings back at a reasonable fps (~30) to get the slow motion effect.

[@OSCAR1777]

To see light moving... That still boggles my mind

[@Bleeinyourself]

@tyler2190fly well I'll just quote their paragraph about possible applications: "applications include industrial imaging to analyze faults and material properties, scientific imaging for understanding ultrafast processes and medical imaging to reconstruct sub-surface elements, i.e., 'ultrasound with light'. In addition, the photon path analysis will allow new forms of computational photography, e.g., to render and re-light photos using computer graphics techniques."

[@simbachrist2011]

this is tomato

[@theonlyron]

very good KARL

[@GG-uj5ru]

Is fruit

[@darktherapy]

Amazing, watch how the tomato is illuminated but has no shadow because the light hasn't reached the wall yet, then some frames later the shadow appears.

[@eddiebaba]

Amazingly beautiful. This needs to be on the front page of CNN

[@OculusQuestFun]

@nielzdg nice. thanks. I just kept reading people comment on how it could be used for many differant applications, but no one mentioned any examples. I had a hard time coming up with anything that we couldn't already capture with a high speed camera.

[@nbidyanta]

@patatustefan It's not a normal camera. They were able to capture only a very thin horizontal slice of the image at a time. The 2D image was built by repeating the experiment multiple times and stacking these slices. Each time the experiment is performed, a new pulse is emitted from the laser. This was possible since all pulses "look" the same. Getting all the data for this video took an hour. You should check out the MIT web news, they have a more detailed description there.

[@Soooooooooooonicable]

Did they just film the movement of light??? THAT'S AWESOME!!

[@nielzdg]

@tedirelan I'm guessing it could be used to film particle collisions in particle colliders, and stuff like that. Analysing things that are very, very, very fast.

[@Wrugoin13]

Just stunning to see the speed of light brought down to our level. How many samples are needed to end up with a completed capture where the pulse of light travels through the scene?

[@hesselvdw_]

So what I was wondering... how many times has this been slowed down?

[@shrimperking]

The 2737299th frame was certainly the best. It conveyed such beautiful emotion...

[@HaveFluFunPal]

Is the last image that of the light showing blue and red shifting? I find it interesting that if you think about it, as you see each frame of the light wave, you should note that the light you are seeing has reflected off of the object and traveled to the camera and THEN been processed into the frame you're seeing. By that point in time, the ACTUAL wave has progressed futher.

[@kaemmi]

@TheIRape Thats because the camera has a resolution of ca. 500x600 px.

[@Silverlance360]

youtube limits the framerate of any video to 30 fps

[@GeorgeB514]

What an amazing time to be alive.

[@hydrokat143]

this is not the weird part of youtube.. this is the hidden part of awesomeness in youtube.

[@bigbezet]

@SpaghettiToaster "At every recording, we can only record a '1D movie' of this narrow field of view." - quoted from the original MIT paper. One scan line is pseudo 1D. 1D, 2D and 3D always references visual representation or a geometric model; an atom is not 3-dimensional, its visual representation can be 3-dimensional.

[@FREAKYNiCKGEEZY]

I don't really kno what I'm watching but it gives me a really good feeling inside

[@sjcb]

That light must be really, really, really bright to give enough light to cover for a trillion fps. Wonder if anyone knows the wattage or lumens of the light used in the vid?

[@cj1419]

read the description... what we watch is compiled footage of a bunch of light pulses, not a single continuous light wave still cool though

[@prophtube]

Absolutely incredible. I love this stuff! That must be one *expensive* camera!

[@JetpackNinjaDinosaur]

why is this not on the front page?!

[@LivingVessel88]

@DesGardius88 Close. We are seeing the reflection of the wavefront of photons. Each pulse is a wave of photons leaving the source simultaneously. Each point in the image is a different distance from the source, giving different intensities at each position at each point in time, from the number of photons reflected from said point. So, while we are not "seeing the photons as they travel through the air," we are seeing the exact photons that were at that point, minus a few femtosec

[@shimbalao]

I really hope they make a video in a room with lots of particles, like dust, so you can see the light traveling midair. That would be awesome ^^

[@comizer2]

i have always thought about how cool it would be if it was possible to fly next to a light beam and observing its front traveling through space. now this is not exactly what i imagined but it definitely is one of the coolest things that science brought to us in the past few years!

[@LostBeetle]

I am a bit confused, they are saying the light exposure lasts less than 1 trillionth of a second, yet the camera records at 1 trillion frames per second, wouldn't that mean the light only lasts in a single frame? As for the propagation of light, it occurs on the backdrop, the actual device giving out the light may take a longer time to fully turn on than a direct beam of light. I want to see this thing record a laser beam travel through empty space from point A to B.

[@leerman22]

Now you can watch the Neutrino Vs. Light race!

[@chillinginjp]

this was all over the news today, very cool stuff!

[@gokhanY]

You cannot determine the color of an item, in this subject the tomato, unless light reaches it.

[@bengacris]

@jazzy639 it's simeple. We see a wave of light because what happen is that they project a laser on a miror then shut the laser down. So we see the reflected light that comes from the mirror :). It's like if you threw an apple on a wall and you were looking at the debris flying.

[@lunaticial]

at the end of the cycle the light bends back around to the beginning

[@kizonyoutube]

Note that in the title it says "visualizing". This allows it to imply it's a representation (fake). If you look at the scene photo it's the 3d render without textures/materials.

[@bruceliebe7418]

Visualizing video at the speed of light - one trillion frames per second

[@killaxclan]

This is the camera they are going to use for the 300 sequel.

[@OryAlle]

I had to watch this twice for it to sink in just how awesome what's going on here is :D

[@bellsTheorem1138]

@DesGardius88 Actually, it is more like shotgunning a pulse of photons at objects and seeing what hits our eyes after bouncing off of the surfaces. This is not panning light, it is a pulse of light that is less than a centimeter long illuminating (by reflection) as it passes the objects. The light source is completely turned off a fraction of a second into the video.

[@135BoZo]

@llortatsujmai We can for the first time see how light moves. Pretty special

[@OculusQuestFun]

What are the applications of technology like this?

[@Bourinos02]

@jazzy639 If I understood well, See it in realtime is like nothing happened, as it's like if you were able to distinguish every frame of a 1 trillion FPS screen. Basically I don't even know if the change of light is noticeable in that case.

[@lunaticial]

"vampire physics" if you put into the search it would be interesting to see that experiment in motion

[@Truthiness231]

[@patatustefan]

@1123aka yes i did. Is the answer to my question located there? I am not able to figure it out? And if the entire video is just the result of computer sampling, then it's no more a 1trillion fps video capture but a 25-30 fps computer generated content based on some kind of data gathered by that super video camera. Am I right?

[@CoasterXYZ]

@EthanJM What you're seeing here isn't a single pulse of light, but thousands of pulses averaged over time. Each pulse reflects off the surface and those reflected photons are captured by the camera. But you're absolutely correct that we see back in time, because it takes time for photons to reflect off a surface and into our eyes, or camera. It doesn't matter if what we're looking at is star billions of light years away, or a tomato that is mere trillionths of light seconds away. :)

[@xGozzax]

I don't understand... why is a 1080p movieclip so unsharp and contains so many artifacts?

[@TheFuckinNewGuy]

Am I getting this wrong or did I just see the speed of lights?!

[@MrJae35087]

i am speechless! This is going to be a great tool in the world of physics!

[@ManniVel]

I don't really get it.. Could we maybe see what the actual video is like at normal speed?

[@ampix0]

This I think would be an observing tool. which by the crazy laws of quantum physics means that they would behave as particles again, even though they are waves.

[@Xcelerate2]

I never knew watching a tomato could be so epic.

[@killerhamster104]

It might help if you do a video of normal highspeed and the trillion high speed to see the diffrence

[@_Shak]

Phenomenal. Does anyone know the name of the music please? It's great.

[@xGozzax]

@xGozzax oh wait.. "The streak camera has a reasonable field of view in horizontal direction but very narrow (roughly equivalent to one scan line) in vertical dimension." Now I get it...

[@DanielZanSalazar]

@beeljr yes cool, however non homogeneous dust will "flicker" or be different at each pixel row with this camera

[@ShapelyDice]

ABSOLUTELY INSANE

[@cl1mbat1ze]

Is it weird that this made me cry a little?

[@SullyDunn]

The fact they picked a tomato as the main character is so Chad.

[@onkelmadin]

Es ist geil das man jetzt Licht sichtbar machen kann.

[@MatthPeder]

Wait, is this showing light MOVING?

[@bigbezet]

@SpaghettiToaster Sorry Sir, but I think that there is no difference between "lightwaves that light the apple" and "those which are reflected by it", and every camera records reflected light. Having said that I repeat, no camera can record actual movement of a lightwave in space. The video you see here is a visualisation based on series of measurements recorded by a streak camera, which was recording light pulses emitted every 13 nanoseconds over a long period of time.

[@carnagerpm]

I like the music, sounds like i'm sneek attacking an alien base with a team of futuristic troopers.

[@ditto316]

well...the slow-mo guy's have some competition right here...

[@mythofechelon]

@xGozzax It's very likely that the experiment and video production were carried out by different people.

[@LucasRaw]

Harmony, in this case, is a wave thing. Both are waves.

[@eltoro2808]

@jazzy639 I am not sure exactly what is going on in this either tbh, I'm not very knowledgeable about optics, I was under the impression that a laser (but lasers emit only a single frequency?) behind the camera emitted a light pulse of a duration of a femto-second (so that the width of the wave we see is about three tenths of a millimetre), and then what we see is how it propagates forwards. It would be useful if they could describe exactly what is happening in this.

[@Caudaliss]

Now show me a video of light traveling through a diffraction grating.

[@eltoro2808]

@jazzy639 you wouldn't be able to see anything in 'real time', the laser light is emitted for only a trillionth of a second (i.e. femto-second), the footage played at real time would probably only last a tiny fraction of a second.

[@BlueShadeProductions]

@GoOgleBG32 Im from UK. botannically/scientifically a Tomato is a fruit (look it up) but it is considered to be a vegetable for culinary purposes or under United States law apparently.

[@eugeniodega]

honestly. seems strange to me. how could happen that the lightwave and illuminated portion of tomato are in line? shouldn't the light do double trip to go back to the camera and being recorded? so when we see tomato the original wave should be more or less equally distant from the tomato. in the other direction

[@zilvina32]

Wow dude, you can capture light, thats cool.