World Fastest High Speed Camera

So how fast is fast when it comes to high speed camera?  10,000 frames per second or how bout 1 million frames a second?   Try, 100 billion frames per second!

A group of scientists have created the world's fastest camera which is capable of capturing up to 100 billion frames per second.

The technology that existed up until now was limited to about 10 million frames per second, limited by storage performance as well as electronic readout from the sensor.

A team at the University of Washington in St. Louis discovered a break-through technique called, "compressed ultrafast photography (CUP)" using combination of laser pulse reflection, refraction, faster-than light propagation of non-information and photon racing in two media.

Ok, that's getting a little technical and way over my head.  According to the lead researcher of the project, Lihong Wang, "For the first time, humans can see light pulses on the fly."

Photo by Stefan Krause

The team hope that their creation would find some real-world application, especially in the field of biomedicine, astronomy and forensics.

Wang also added, "Because this technique advances the imaging frame rate by orders of magnitude, we now enter a new regime to open up new visions."

You can read more about CUP photography device Wang's team has developed here: link