If you watch ‘The Big Bang Theory’, you already know that Caltech (The California Institute of Technology) is home to some of the smartest minds in the world. You know, the place where Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj work?
But what you might not be aware of is that it also houses the world’s fastest camera. And when the ‘Slow Mo Guys’ heard about it, they decided to check it out.
But first, who are the Slow Mo Guys and what do they do?
YouTubers Gavin Free and Daniel Gruchy (Gav and Dan) use high-speed cinema cameras to film fast things like flames, water streams and exploding watermelons in extreme slow-motion. Launched in 2010, their YouTube channel now has over 12 million subscribers.
Lush. pic.twitter.com/FDFbOvgHx4
— The Slow Mo Guys (@TheSlowMoGuys) February 16, 2019
This time they decided to go big and film the fastest known thing in the world – the speed of light! First, they tried to capture light going from one end of the bottle to the other. Then proceeded to much more complex experiments.
Here, light is travelling at 2000 picoseconds (in layman terms, a million times faster than a bullet).
And this is light travelling a distance of 1 mm (in 50 picoseconds) through a vial of diluted milk. Filmed at 10 trillion frames per second!
"No human should ever have seen this, it's like you're looking at the base of the universe" – @gavinfree.https://t.co/8IRmja9sQv pic.twitter.com/tOY6w38Lg7
— The Slow Mo Guys (@TheSlowMoGuys) March 28, 2019
Check out how this mindblowing feat was accomplished.
What a time to be alive. We’ve already heard the sound of Mars and now we get to see light through our very own eyes. What do you think we’ll see next? Invisibility cloaks, flying cars or something else?