[jastanton]

Honest question, what can be seen at one quadrillion fps that 10 trillion cannot already see? This question is out of pure ignorance and wonder, like "Why would you ever want to move faster than a horse". But this is at a scale I just cannot think in anymore.

[ShorsHammer]

At that speed you can measure the "echos" of light, using femto-photography and some computing, it's possible to image objects around corners, outside of the cameras line of sight.

More info: http://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/cornar/

Theres a few videos around of Raskar demonstrating this.

[d--b]

Wow. Thought this would be used for experimental physics, not another spying device! Cool stuff though.

[JoeAltmaier]

Years ago I saw an atomic explosion film taken with nanosecond frames and the comment was, it wasn't fast enough since each frame showed entirely different images

[godelski]

Here's a great example with something people have a really hard time wrapping their heads around too.

Let's say that you have a train moving at a constant velocity, v. Then a switch is flipped and turns on a light that is in the exact center of the room. Which wall does the light hit first? [0]

Seen from on the train[1]: might as well be seen as if you were in a stationary room. The light hits both walls at the same time.

Seen from off the train[2]: The speed of light is constant. Since the train is also moving the light can't travel at v+c. So it hits the back wall, which is traveling towards the light at v, first.

This is a famous thought experiment and in practice would be difficult to perform, even with such a camera. But I'm saying it because it illustrates that we can actually observe relativistic effects. Things act extremely differently than what we're used to when small or moving fast. Assuming you had a really high resolution, something like length contraction could be observed, and measured, in normal conditions.

So there are actually a lot of weird things going on that we wouldn't be aware of. These ultra high speed cameras allow us to observe some of these strange phenomena.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Traincar...

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Traincar...

[simcop2387]

I imagine that at least the techniques and underlying technology would be incredibly illuminating inside particle colliders.

[TylerE]

Imagine expirmental physics. Being able to watch things like explosions in super minute detail. Watching light propogate.

[neom]

"Watching light propogate"

Gave me shivers.

[mediawatcher234]

Umm good luck getting enough photons to see anything. Shot noise

[TylerE]

So shoot at 1 quad, and average 1000 frames to one output frame? Light will still be moving less than 1mm per frame.

[dTal]

Pretty sure the light is integrated over a frame anyway, so that will get you the same results as just shooting at the lower framerate.

[jjeaff]

It's already being done. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EtsXgODHMWk