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See the original image at wired.com —

Physicists Take High-Speed Photography to the Attosecond

wired.com — Faster camera shutters used to be enough, but recently lasers have let physicists break the femto- and attosecond barriers, compressing the temporal resolution of images down to the time it takes light to cross a hydrogen atom.

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  • NikhilVerma, on 02/07/2008, -26/+6holy ***** !!!!! .....
  • Googler1, on 02/07/2008, -20/+6thats f'in intense!
  • prgmctan, on 02/07/2008, -20/+5110 is a lot of... ass? (autoseconds). can't wait until they drop that down to 10 ;)
  • KaiSe7eN, on 02/07/2008, -18/+8I want a camera that would resemble the human eye and take pictures as we see our surroundings, day or night, exactly as we see it, in the same light and everything. Any idea who makes a camera like this?
    • Alliebomb, on 02/07/2008, -10/+14God.
    • KaiSe7eN, on 02/07/2008, -7/+2Great Answer =)
    • VinceNoir, on 02/07/2008, -10/+2It's called Memex you n00b: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush Read a little and learn something about the world.
    • solidhayter, on 02/07/2008, -1/+5High-end D/SLR cameras are usually pretty accurate. It gets tricky with darkness though. Not to mention we have TWO eyes and our brain receives and combines the sight from each to create our complete vision giving us a very accurate visual perception of our environment. You could make a camera with two photo sensors and the data from each is combined, but what good would that do when the resulting photo is 2-dimensional?

      Those high end cameras have a one-up on us though, as opposed to the unaided eye, a camera can zoom to impressive depth with little or no loss in detail. They are also not perceptible to bright light or a sudden contrast in light leaving "burned" images on the censor.
      • BigBallistix, on 02/07/2008, -1/+2If they're already able to make a contact lense with a transparent UI as an overlay, then I think laser engraving 3D images onto something similar to a contact lense shouldn't be a problem. But yes, you are right on the other points.
      • ryan83189, on 02/07/2008, -1/+2a stereoscopic rig, with some HDR processing should do the trick.
    • anononon, on 02/07/2008, -1/+5What are we going to display it on?
    • hfactor, on 02/07/2008, -1/+2The way you perceive your surrounding has a lot more to do with higher levels of processing in the visual areas of your brain than with your eyes alone. So you are not only talking about advanced cameras, you are talking about AI.
    • DrDabbles, on 02/07/2008, -1/+2Actually, resolution wise there are cameras that beat the human eye...by quite a bit. In fact, the resolution of the human eye is pretty low. Most of what gives our sight "quality" is our brain processing the image. Just to prove that, there's a black spot in the middle of your vision, but you don't notice it. In simpler terms, you brain is 'shopping everything you see.
  • Taikun, on 02/07/2008, -3/+83I'll probably still blink and ruin the picture...
  • cpbrown, on 02/07/2008, -16/+5read Nature you'd hear about most of digg's cutting edge science a couple of years before all the prepubescent teens have an orgy over it
  • VinceNoir, on 02/07/2008, -16/+3Bleah. Photoshopped! I can do color gradients in Photoshop too. Big whoop. Fail.
  • smartass007, on 02/07/2008, -11/+4money shot
  • coit, on 02/07/2008, -14/+17Attoboy!
  • navdeep321, on 02/07/2008, -13/+6Next step zeptoseconds?

    A zeptosecond is one trillionth of one billionth of one second.
  • garfonzo, on 02/07/2008, -15/+4I have no clue what I'm looking at
  • wukillabee, on 02/07/2008, -19/+6video or it didnt happen!
  • Flappity, on 02/07/2008, -5/+24I hate when perfectly good comment sections are ruined like this.
  • anoo, on 02/07/2008, -14/+2Digg up wukillabee's comment! That was the first funny thing I've seen here in weeks! Digg'ers are getting so stuffy lately.
  • Sharky35, on 02/07/2008, -3/+20Tell me there aren't roaming hordes of idiots on Digg...
    This post is absolute proof. Granted most had NOTHING INTELLIGENT to say, but a mass burial® was not needed.
  • Mellowmuppet, on 02/07/2008, -10/+1Wonder what they where sayinbg
  • vladin, on 02/07/2008, -1/+23a little perspective

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attoseconds
    An attosecond is one billionth of one billionth of a second. (One attosecond is to one second what one second is to the age of the universe.)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtoseconds
    A femtosecond is one billionth of one millionth of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second, what a second is to about 32 million years
    • wukillabee, on 02/07/2008, -10/+1so its like .000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of a second?
      • moskaudancer, on 02/07/2008, -2/+5No, because that's zero. You forgot a 1 on the end.
        • itsthebrod, on 02/07/2008, -1/+4There's a 1 on the end... It's just that Digg truncated it. Copy and paste it if you really want proof.
      • hfactor, on 02/07/2008, -2/+3No, it´s .000000000000000001 of a second. How did you come up with all those zeros?
    • greywolf330, on 02/07/2008, -7/+3Fail
  • xxNIRVANAxx, on 02/07/2008, -12/+3Here we go again!

    DIGG ME DOWN!!!11!!lol
  • Surfrock66, on 02/07/2008, -14/+4Awesome, someone now finally has a camera that can take a picture fast enough of me having sex.
  • crapmatic, on 02/07/2008, -9/+1Aren't photos supposed to show two dimensions of space? This shows only one dimension. It's great and all, but not really a photo.
  • digindrivefast, on 02/07/2008, -5/+2"The pump-probe technique has been modified to pare pulse times to attoseconds by using photons emitted when electrons get excited out of their orbit and crash back in."

    No Kidlets, science is not boring and can be very funny!!
  • IBadassI, on 02/07/2008, -10/+1Video or it didn't happen
  • digjam, on 02/07/2008, -7/+2AAH.. nice looking multicolored waves...
  • jeexbit, on 02/07/2008, -2/+5"temporal resolution"? sweet lord it's too early for that - more coffee!!
  • Trollmaster, on 02/07/2008, -6/+3Wow!
  • Papajohn56, on 02/07/2008, -1/+8it's funny how the past two physics related articles have had mass burials going on. then again the comments have been ridiculously dumb, and full of people trying to spout pseudoscience and garbage philosophy. physics is a great subject, but reading too deep is a trap you need to avoid falling into. even the greatest of scientists know this
    • DrDabbles, on 02/07/2008, -2/+2No, the greatest of scientists work on theoretical physics...because they read too deep and got interested. Pseudoscience and the like come from a lack of understanding, not an abundance of knowledge.
      • Papajohn56, on 02/08/2008, -0/+1that's not reading too deep, that's expanding theoretical knowledge. reading too deep into concepts leads to pseudoscience.
    • digindrivefast, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2The study of Science/Physics...

      My point WAS: It can be fun, funny, and "taught" in such a way that "excites" !!

      We do not inspire our children to learn in this country.
      (Our children are not excited to learn in this country....)

      If I assume the author of the paragraph I "quoted" above was reaching out to "teach" by exciting the readers senses.... the author NAILED it in that brief paragraph!!!

      I DO NOT KNOW diddly-squat about an "aatosecond" or a "femtosecond"..

      Do YOU SEE where I'm going with this string?


  • drgirlfriend, on 02/07/2008, -6/+2Coincidentally, the very same amount of time it took for the digg effect to paralyze wired.com :(
  • jcastillo81, on 02/07/2008, -4/+4I would like to see more pictures of the nuclear explosion in super slo-mo. Anyone know if they exist on these interwebs?
  • DarkDx, on 02/07/2008, -13/+1BURY ME IF YOU LIKE TO TAKE A ***** IN YOUR GAY COUPLE'S MOUTH.
  • drgmdp, on 02/07/2008, -5/+1digg down fest!
  • brianara3, on 02/07/2008, -2/+2I just have to add the classic, "This is not a graveyard, stop burying people!"
    • digindrivefast, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2Thanks, and you are un-buried by one! Ck out my small contribution and let me know, as you wish, if the author didn't put "scientific-speak" into non-scientific language, (layman's terms,)
      and assist the non-scientific brain to "get IT!"
      Making it fun!!
      Good digg
  • chatzimcfee, on 02/07/2008, -1/+2Where are some examples of this? I wanna see some pictures!
  • nmathew, on 02/07/2008, -1/+3I just wanted to point out that the summary is incorrect. Light travels on the order of .3mm in a picosecond (1*10^-12s). We use delay stages in my lab that give subpicosecond resolution without difficulty. In a femtosecond, that would be .3 microns, and in an attosecond, that would be .3 nanometers, or about 3 angstroms. An angstrom is 1*10^-10 meters. A Bohr radius (decent estimation of hydrogen atom radius) is roughly 53 picometers, or 5*10^-11 meters. c (speed of light 3*10^8m/s) times 118 attoseconds gives me ~3*10^-8 meters, which is much more than the diameter of a hydrogen atom.

    Boy, I hope I didn't screw up and look like a moron.
  • RationalXubrnce, on 02/08/2008, -1/+2 Shutter - 1 attosecond
    ISO - 32,000,000,0000,000,000
  • TymonBrown, on 02/08/2008, -0/+0ohhhh snap. That is brilliant.
  •  

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