{"id":386137,"date":"2026-01-02T04:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T04:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/386137\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T04:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T04:51:13","slug":"youtuber-captures-the-speed-of-light-using-a-2-billion-frames-per-second-camera-and-nobodys-ever-seen-anything-like-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/386137\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTuber captures the speed of light using a 2-billion-frames-per-second camera and nobody\u2019s ever seen anything like it"},"content":{"rendered":"

The speed of light is one of those things you learn about in school but never expect to actually see happening. <\/p>\n

But one YouTuber has done something absolutely wild: he built a homemade setup that lets him film light itself as it moves.<\/p>\n

In fact, his camera system<\/a> is so advanced that it can record at an unbelievable two billion frames per second.<\/p>\n

The resulting video is pretty wild and unlike anything the internet has ever seen.<\/p>\n

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Capturing the speed of light with a homemade setup<\/p>\n

The magic behind the setup isn\u2019t a giant Hollywood camera or a million-dollar lab. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually much weirder and far more creative. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>YouTube\/AlphaPhoenix<\/p>\n

Instead of filming everything at once like a normal camera, YouTuber AlphaPhoenix<\/a> films one tiny dot, or pixel, at a time. <\/p>\n

He shines a laser into the scene, and when the light bounces back, a super-sensitive sensor picks it up and sends a tiny blip to an oscilloscope, which is basically a high-speed graphing machine. <\/p>\n

That little blip tells him how long the light took to make the trip. <\/p>\n

One direction equals one pixel. <\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of directions equal a full picture.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s even crazier is that light does its whole journey across his garage in maybe 20 or 30 billionths of a second.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s so fast it might as well be teleporting. <\/p>\n

But the oscilloscope takes 200 thousandths of a second just to show it on the screen. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s ten million times slower than the event he\u2019s recording<\/a>. <\/p>\n

By the time he sees the light pulse on the display, the actual photon that caused it has already come and gone ages ago.<\/p>\n

But that delay doesn\u2019t matter, because he uses the laser itself as a \u2018start now!\u2019 trigger. <\/p>\n

Every time the laser fires, the machine knows exactly when to begin counting. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s how he\u2019s able to line up all those one-pixel recordings perfectly. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>YouTube\/AlphaPhoenix<\/p>\n

Amazing feat with almost no resources<\/p>\n

After he\u2019s collected them all, he feeds the data into his computer, which assembles them into a single video, which is basically a flipbook made of tiny light-timing measurements.<\/p>\n

The end result is jaw-dropping: you can actually watch light crawl across the frame like a glowing ripple. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>YouTube\/AlphaPhoenix<\/p>\n

It looks like something from a sci-fi movie<\/a>, except it\u2019s completely real.<\/p>\n

And remember, this wasn\u2019t filmed in a lab at NASA or MIT; it was filmed in a garage, by a guy with a laser, albeit with boundless ingenuity and plenty of patience.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most surprising thing? <\/p>\n

He isn\u2019t even the only one trying to capture the speed of light on camera, although these guys did use special equipment<\/a> procured from the California Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t# Tags –
\nSpeed of light<\/a>, Tech<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The speed of light is one of those things you learn about in school but never expect to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-386137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}