The bullets from “The Matrix” are still flying in many people’s minds.

This movie technique of slowing down time during an action scene is today widely called “bullet time” and the term had first been used within the original script of the 1999 Wachowski’s classic.

However, special effects are just that, only special effects and the speed of the pistol bullet in windless conditions is only hundreds of meters per second.

Now, with a really cool new(ish) photography method called Femto-Photography, scientists are able to take high-speed video at a trillion frames per second.

This is so fast it allows us to watch groups of photons move across an object. In other words, just as high-speed cameras were able to slow down the bullet, revealing its mechanics and the processes that occur when it hits an apple or watermelon – now, using the magic of photography, we can slow down light, revealing its splendor.

Recently, Chinese researchers were able to record the movement of light with a breakthrough resolution and frame rate.

„The China Laser Magazine“, sponsored by the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Optical Society, recently released the ten major advances in Chinese optics in 2019.

Among them was a feat conducted by a team of researchers led by a Professor Chen Feng of Xi’an Jiaotong University.

They were using femtosecond micro-nano laser to capture movement of light, according to Chinastarmarket.cn.

In layman’s terms, this machine is equivalent to an ultra-fast camera with 4 trillion frames per second, with the spectral resolution that has reached sub-nanometer level (1 meter = 10 to the 9th power nanometer).

However, the equipment of the Chen Feng‘s team is hardly a “camera”.

This is a large-scale platform, on top of which many optical lenses, prisms, gratings and other components are stacked, which need to be adjusted by someone who understands the principles of ultrafast optics.

In order to allow researchers in other fields to get started with ultra-fast cameras, Chen Feng‘s team plans to integrate them into a chassis, which looks like a real camera, and the functions will be operated via software.

“We will try to turn it into a relatively stable instrument in the next 2 to 3 years,” said Chen Feng.

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