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n2doc

(47,953 posts)
Tue Jan 24, 2017, 09:01 PM Jan 2017

Scientists Use 100 Billion FPS Camera to Capture Lights Sonic Boom


When an object breaks the sound barrier—accelerates to the point where it’s moving faster than the speed of sound—it creates pressure waves that result in what is called a “sonic boom” and Mach cone. Now, scientists have managed to captured a similar phenomenon for light itself.

In case you’ve never seen it, this is what it looks like when a fighter jet breaks the sound barrier. That cone is called a Mach cone, signifying that the aircraft just exceeded Mach 1:


Scientists have known that light does something similar when moving from a medium where it is slowed down (like glass) into open air where it can move at full speed, but nobody had yet managed to capture this so-called “photonic Mach cone” on camera. Until Jinyang Liang and his team at Washington University in St. Louis, that is.

The breakthrough is not to be taken lightly. The speed of sound is approximately 340 meters per second; the speed of light, by comparison, is a blistering 3.0 x 10^8 meters per second. So how the heck do you capture something that fast on camera?

more

https://petapixel.com/2017/01/23/scientists-use-100-billion-fps-camera-capture-lights-sonic-boom/

A real photon torpedo!
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Scientists Use 100 Billion FPS Camera to Capture Lights Sonic Boom (Original Post) n2doc Jan 2017 OP
Have you ever taken a ride on an SRB? Xipe Totec Jan 2017 #1
Very cool! longship Jan 2017 #2

Xipe Totec

(43,872 posts)
1. Have you ever taken a ride on an SRB?
Tue Jan 24, 2017, 09:14 PM
Jan 2017

You'll see the break throug the sound barrier on the way up, and on the way down.



(ETA) Around 700 mph

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