Daily Archives: August 25, 2012


Ramesh Raskar: Imaging at a trillion frames per second

Thanks to RogerG for posting this on his Facebook page.


Ramesh Raskar presents femto-photography, a new type of imaging so fast it visualizes the world one trillion frames per second, so detailed it shows light itself in motion. This technology may someday be used to build cameras that can look “around” corners or see inside the body without X-rays.


So, how do I turn this into something political?

I suppose I could remark on how the Tea Partiers are still arguing about 19th century science while many of us are ready to move on to 21st century science.


MIT News has the article A camera that peers around corners. This is about the same research presented above. Maybe they had to use the idea of seeing around corners to sell this line of research or maybe it even originated from solving this type of problem. However, I think that these techniques will provide far deeper fundamental insights into basic physics than just looking around corners. The uses that this technology will be put to will far outstrip the imaginations of the people who invented it. It will certainly outstrip anything I can imagine right now.