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The Fastest Camera Ever Made Captures 100 Billion Frames Per Second
Jason Koebler writes A new imaging technique is able to capture images at 100 billion frames per second—fast enough to watch light interact with objects, which could eventually lead to new cloaking technologies. The camera was developed by a team at Washington University in St. Louis—for the team's first tests, it was able to visualize laser pulse reflections, photons racing through air and through resin, and "faster-than-light propagation of non-information." It can also be used in conjunction with telescopes and to image optical and quantum communications, according to lead researcher Liang Gao.
No... no it isn't. And no you can't. And no they won't.
yup thats exactly how i feel
Imagine a powerful, hand-held laser that you can point at the moon and see the reflection. Point it at the far end of the surface of the moon. Now flick your wrist, sweeping the laser across the surface of the moon within 1/100th of a second. The reflected dot will _appear_ to move faster than the speed of light. That is, it will appear to move smoothly* across 3476km (the diameter of moon) of the surface in 1/100th of a second. The speed of light is 299792km/second, and the dot moved at 347600km/second. In other words, it appeared to have moved faster than the speed of light.
Actually, there's really no need to italicize the word appear, I guess. There is a dot and it is moving (even if you define it as a series of discrete reflections, they're all causally related). It's just not the kind of "thing" that can convey information. You can't encode any information in the movement that conveys information to an observer faster than the speed of light.
* You may need to use time-lapse video. I just used the moon as an example because it's concrete. If the moon were larger and farther, the sweeping motion of your wrist could be slower.
For a receiver situated on the moon, limited by the speed of light between him and his tracking devices (which are also situated on the moon), this part gets a little tricky, doesn't it? (i.e., "tricky," I mean "impossible.")
If it can watch photons move, what exactly transfers the existence of those photons to the camera's sensor? some of the photons that refract from dust and air?
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...