The Speed-of-Light Camera

An Indian-born professor is behind an invention nicknamed “the world’s slowest fastest camera”.

An Indian-born professor is behind an invention nicknamed “the world’s slowest fastest camera”. Dr Ramesh Raskar and his team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s media laboratory have built a virtual slow-motion camera that snaps a picture in less than two-trillionth of a second, enabling the camera to record light itself as it travels from one point to another.

“We have seen images of a bullet piercing an apple,” says Associate Professor Dr Raskar, explaining his camera in a video on YouTube. “But photons (light particles) travel about a million times faster than bullets. Our camera can see these photons or the bullets of light travelling through space.”

The project, named ‘femto photography,’ borrowed from the term for quadrillionths of a second, envisions this technology appended to modern-day smartphones, enabling them to detect if a fruit at the supermarket is ripe enough. Such a camera, says Dr Raskar, may be useful in medical imaging, especially conducting ultrasound through light; in industrial imaging to analyse defects in materials; or in scientific research and even consumer photography.

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Arindam Mukherjee