I'm skeptical because.. how would you see a photon? Unless photons themselves give off light as they travel, but that would mean photons emit photons...
This would be very close to watching the light pulse travel across the scene...except for that second effect: that the parts of the scene are different distances from the camera.
They can. It's a non-classical concequence of Quantum Electrodynamics. If you are interested in the cross-sections, check out Berestetskii et al., 1982.
I think they were using the word "virtual" to describe the array of camera sensors as one camera. It sounds like basically they had an array of sensors all snapping as fast as they could, but offset in time from each other by some amount, to achieve the effect of having 1 frame for every N fractions of a second. They also had to break down the scene into long strips and repeatedly use the sensors take the same picture on each strip and re-combine the strips later.
> I'm skeptical because.. how would you see a photon? Unless photons themselves give off light as they travel, but that would mean photons emit photons...
What you were seeing in the video were the photons entering the camera after having bounced off of the scene. It's kind of misleading that they're making it sound like you're seeing the photons as they're hitting the object in real time, When in fact, the photons had already hit the object and are bouncing back into the camera. But the resolution with which they're detecting the incoming photons conveys the "shape" of the waves bouncing and propagating off/around objects. That's my take on it at least.
It was misleading in the way the commentator said we can now watch the photons as they travel through space.
Space is full of photons from stars and galaxies. We only ever see the source of their current direction, which is why space is black, but we see the the bodies within it.
Regarding the "seeing a photon," it's just an analogy.
It may be the laser being refracted by the air, just like commercial green lasers are refracted by fog. I actually think is the only explanation.(And neutrinos, because seriously, neutrinos rock).
Also, I can see some interesting uses to this camera, beyond light studying...
It is. Seeing is interacting with photons, so you can't 'see' a photon that didn't just hit your camera. The process is similar to how I heard we can see speed of light in space, as light from exploding star propagates through a nebula and reflects back to us. I can't find a reference for that though, I heard it as a story from a physics professor.
> And neutrinos, because seriously, neutrinos rock
And magnets.