Hasta La Gadget!

The Steam camera not only shoots images just 440 trillionths of a second in length, it can rack up an astonishing six million of them in a single second.

How does it work this magic? Lasers, of course, the answer to all scientific problems. The Steam (Serial Time-Encoded Amplified iMaging) doesn’t have a physical shutter, instead relying on a pulse of light to freeze time, much like a standard camera flash will freeze a bullet hitting a balloon.

The laser pulse contains a very wide range of light colors, sent in a known 2D pattern — think of the pixels on an LCD screen, only smaller, and made of lasers. When these hit the subject, only some parts are reflected back, just like a normal flash. Only in this case, the reflected pulse cannot be seen. Instead, the pulse which bounces back actually has a new makeup of colors, missing those which were absorbed. This pulse is piped through a special optic-fiber in which the differing speeds of light colors is amplified, some slowing down until they are separated enough to be detected by normal photo-diodes.

These are then assigned positions on the image, depending on where they were when they left. The result? Soon we’ll be able to take pictures of the interactions between neurons and the actual interiors of cells.

Fastest Camera Ever Built Uses Lasers [Wired Science]

Debut for world’s fastest camera [BBC via The Twitter]

Photo: Kevin1027/Flickr