Researchers from MIT may get to a revolutionary technology in image capture, something that might capture what is beyond your viewing area.
When pointed towards a building the light “bounces” on walls and doors and is able to register what the viewer cannot see. This technology is called “femtosecond transient imaging system” and explores the possibilities of registering light in extended time frames. Traditional cameras only capture that exact moment, and therefore this idea breaks the time barrier in photography. Some may say that new tech such as the Nikon1 series can already push the time barrier, but what it does (and it is very nice!) is to take some snapshots before you actually press the shutter. It can even select the best among the pictures it took for you. This might sound enough to bring ‘Doc Brown’ back from the future and shout ‘Great Scott’. But it might sound ‘old’ if compared to registering everything around you for a couple of moments.
Yes, EVERYTHING. The second barrier the MIT guys are breaking is on the Physics side. The can now ‘bend’ light with special short laser beams, shot in bursts of one femtosecond (1,000,000,000,000th of a second). These beams are reflected for an example on a door then bounce to reflect on the person inside the room. This revolutionary idea can make the camera ‘see around the corner’ and really capture what happens inside a room or behind walls!Capturing all this photons for some moments and registering the time it took for each of them to travel to the lens makes possible to draw an overwhelming ‘3D time-image’ representation.
This system is still in development stage by MIT Professor Ramesh Raskar, but some applications already come to the mind. Just in a simple thought, it might help a rescue team to ‘see’ ahead in a fire inside a building and foresee dangers or victims.
Stephen Hawkings and Einstein must be proud!
