Light Travels in Both Time and Space

A groundbreaking achievement by physicists from Imperial College London has brought new insights into quantum physics by recreating the famous double-slit experiment in the dimension of time. 

Led by Professor Riccardo Sapienza from the Department of Physics, this research team explored how light interacts with a material whose optical properties can change within a few femtoseconds, revealing more about the fundamental nature of light.

The original double-slit experiment, first performed in 1801 by Thomas Young, showed that light behaves as a wave. Later experiments demonstrated that light also behaves as particles, revealing its quantum nature. 

In this classic experiment, light was passed through two physical slits, creating an interference pattern that displayed light’s wave properties. This experiment became crucial in understanding not just light but also the quantum behavior of particles like electrons and atoms.     READ MORE...

Trillion Frames Per Second Camera

A new camera developed at MIT can photograph a trillion frames per second.

Compare that with a traditional movie camera which takes a mere 24. This new advancement in photographic technology has given scientists the ability to photograph the movement of the fastest thing in the Universe, light.

The actual event occurred in a nano second, but the camera has the ability to slow it down to twenty seconds.

For some perspective, according to New York Times writer, John Markoff, "If a bullet were tracked in the same fashion moving through the same fluid, the resulting movie would last three years."  READ MORE...