Self-taught engineer Brian Gaydet, creator of the YouTube channel AlphaPhoenix, has created a camera with a speed of 2 billion frames per second and used it to record the movement of a laser beam in slow motion. The device allows you to observe a phenomenon that has until now only been theoretical: individual frames recorded the speed of light at about 30 cm per nanosecond.
Self-taught engineer Brian Gaydet, creator of the YouTube channel AlphaPhoenix, has created a camera with a speed of 2 billion frames per second and used it to record the movement of a laser beam in slow motion. The device allows you to observe a phenomenon that has until now only been theoretical: individual frames recorded the speed of light at about 30 cm per nanosecond.
Heydet's camera is assembled from a gimbal-mounted mirror, two tubes, a simple lens, a light sensor, and Python code that synchronizes it all, writes Engadget.
By pointing a camera at a laser, you can capture a beam of light at 2 billion frames per second, showing it moving smoothly between mirrors. The speed varies depending on the camera's position in relation to the laser.
The peculiarity of the device is that the camera captures only one pixel per shooting cycle. To obtain a full-resolution image, each pixel must be recorded separately. Guidet used an interlacing method to synchronize all the recorded pixels into a single video.
In 2024, the YouTuber had already created a camera that could shoot 1 billion frames per second, but to achieve the new record, he had to rebuild the system from scratch. He upgraded the motors for greater precision, beefed up the optics for sharper images, and reworked the software to process massive amounts of data in real time. These improvements allowed the camera to capture the movement of light like never before.
