World's fastest camera captures footage at 156 trillion frames per second

The world's fastest camera can capture footage at a rate of 156 trillion frames per second (fps), opening a new window into ultrafast phenomena that were previously impossible to see, scientists say.

The new device uses a novel optical technique to capture 132 frames from a single pulse of an ultra-fast laser. The scientists described the new device in a study published Feb. 21 in the journal Nature Communications.

This technology lets scientists record phenomena that occur in femtoseconds — one quadrillionth of a second. The technology could provide valuable insights that impact different fields of research and development, from creating new computer memory technologies to ultrasound medical treatments, the researchers wrote in their paper.

"This camera is more than just a toy, it's actually a very important piece of scientific equipment," lead author Jinyang Liang, an associate professor of optics at the National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS) in Quebec City, told Live Science. "We are on the verge of developing a very generic imaging system that allows us to see lots of phenomena that were not accessible before."

The main challenge when imaging ultrafast phenomena is that even the snappiest camera sensors can only capture footage at a rate of several hundred million fps, said Liang. But plenty of events in nature occur on timescales five or six orders of magnitude faster than that.

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The standard approach to capturing superfast phenomena involves firing a laser pulse at them then measuring how much light is reflected or absorbed. This is repeated many times, each targeting a different time window separated by just a few femtoseconds. But this "pump and probe" approach only works for static samples or precisely repeatable phenomena, Liang said.