Scientists have created a blazing-fast scientific camera that shoots images at an encoding rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) to individual pixels — equivalent to 156.3 trillion frames per second. Dubbed SCARF (swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography), the research-grade camera could lead to breakthroughs in fields studying micro-events that come and go too quickly for today’s most expensive scientific sensors.
SCARF has successfully captured ultrafast events like absorption in a semiconductor and the demagnetization of a metal alloy. The research could open new frontiers in areas as diverse as shock wave mechanics or developing more effective medicine.
If they recorded at that speed for 1 hour and played it back at 1 frame per second, all the time since the Big Bang will have passed before they get through 40 minutes of recording.
Almost, but not quite. A single second recording played at one fps would take roughly 5 million years to finish, so a 40 minute recording would take 12 billion years to finish at 1 fps. The big bang was 13.8 billion years ago.