7mths? What unit is that. Did they mean 7μs resolution? How is that special? I see youtubers doing nanoseconds.
edit: here is the important information in this article.
> Scorpius is a new accelerator project planned for the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) that will use an electron beam that can be broken into customized pulses to deliver x-rays and capture multiple images only hundreds of nanoseconds apart.
While we're nit-picking the title, what does the "real-time" part mean? How would it be different if it wasn't real-time?
Dictionary.com defines "real-time" like as, "the actual time during which a process or event occurs", eg "along with much of the country, he watched events unfolding in real time on TV". Or in the domain of Computing, "relating to a system in which input data is processed within milliseconds so that it is available virtually immediately as feedback to the process from which it is coming, e.g. a missile guidance system might have "real-time signal processing".
Neither definition work here. It seems like they took a sequence of pictures very quickly, and then, some time later, played them back at an enormously slowed-down rate.
The opposite of "real-time" in this context would be "sampling". It means that the capture represents the high-resolution time history of one particular event (one explosion) instead of fast and successively offset captures from as many events.
The first line of the articles says "seven-millionths of a second", which would be 1/7μs or 0,14μs. They also mention that the camera shot 16 frames in that period, so that would be once every 0,00875μs or once every 8,75ns
Youtubers are a couple of magnitudes away from that, AFAIK
I would say you described "one seven millionth" of a second (1/7,000,000 s)
"Seven millionths" would be 7/1,000,000 s (7μs). They take 20 to 40 images in that period using 7 cameras, so any given camera might be as low as 1.4μs per frame.
The slow mo guys did a video [1] at 10 trillion FPS. They also recently did another video [2] at 5,000,000 FPS. Their other videos vary between 50,000 FPS and 850,000 FPS.
Edit: They mention in [2] that the Phantom camera they have can go to a 95ns exposure up to 1,750,000 FPS.
I've never heard of `{number} {plural magnitude}` meaning `mag / number`. I've only ever seen it mean `number * mag`. As in 3-thousandths == 3 * 0.001 not 0.001 / 3.
7 months/seconds - Its both a dimensionless quantity and a variable. Very impressive. Los Alamos is taking the USA's 'anything but metric units for measuring' to new levels.
Fascinating look into the dynamic imaging capabilities at Los Alamos National Lab—essentially, how the U.S. is able to analyze nuclear-level explosive events without actually conducting nuclear tests.
The Lab uses multiple systems to image these high-speed events:
• pRad uses proton radiography to get 20–40 frames of a detonation, with material-level resolution based on density.
• DARHT uses dual-axis x-ray imaging to create 3D snapshots from two angles, ideal for testing whether the computational models built from pRad hold up.
• Scorpius (in development) will take this a step further by using subcritical plutonium in a new accelerator at NNSS, capturing multiple high-resolution frames just nanoseconds apart.
The fact that they can tailor experiments based on frame-by-frame behavior of individual materials under explosive stress feels like the real-world version of “bullet time” physics modeling. The margins of error come down to billionths of a second.
Every time I read about one of the national labs doing this research, I wonder how much longer we will head about these. I feel fairly positive that DOGE's layoffs and budget cuts mean this output will fade away in time.
I worry about this, but these capabilities are hard to replace. This kind of research hasn’t historically been something you can outsource to private companies. Or—at least—it hasn’t been until now. Even if this administration wants to open that door, the infrastructure investment required for the accelerators alone is staggering: easily in the multiple billions.
Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but you seem like you're talking about privatizing this research whereas the other commenter seems to be talking about public cuts leading to a reduction of research. Just because something gets cut doesn't mean it gets outsourced elsewhere.
Labs like this also have huge black budget spending that we don't get to see.
I'm guessing we'll see more hidden spending in future as the nukes and the engineers that made them get older. its worth asking if they even work (in some countries arsenals at least)
It's an apples-to-oranges comparison, but I'm reminded of the ~10^12 fps (1.7 ps exposures) demonstrated in work at MIT[0], which was for a completely different application.
Why are science communicators so consistently missing the mark?
Is it not obvious that if you're writing an article proclaiming to capture _explosions_ at 7mths of a second, people want to see some pictures of said explosions?
Clearly they're understanding that explosions are a hook to grab the reader's attention, but then they just don't include any of the resulting pictures?
Readit News
edit: here is the important information in this article.
> Scorpius is a new accelerator project planned for the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) that will use an electron beam that can be broken into customized pulses to deliver x-rays and capture multiple images only hundreds of nanoseconds apart.
So 0.1μs or 100ns temporal resolution 3D X-ray.
Dictionary.com defines "real-time" like as, "the actual time during which a process or event occurs", eg "along with much of the country, he watched events unfolding in real time on TV". Or in the domain of Computing, "relating to a system in which input data is processed within milliseconds so that it is available virtually immediately as feedback to the process from which it is coming, e.g. a missile guidance system might have "real-time signal processing".
Neither definition work here. It seems like they took a sequence of pictures very quickly, and then, some time later, played them back at an enormously slowed-down rate.
Deleted Comment
Youtubers are a couple of magnitudes away from that, AFAIK
"Seven millionths" would be 7/1,000,000 s (7μs). They take 20 to 40 images in that period using 7 cameras, so any given camera might be as low as 1.4μs per frame.
Edit: They mention in [2] that the Phantom camera they have can go to a 95ns exposure up to 1,750,000 FPS.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ys_yKGNFRQ&pp=ygUMc2xvdyBtb...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTkZ36g4GOs
I've never heard of `{number} {plural magnitude}` meaning `mag / number`. I've only ever seen it mean `number * mag`. As in 3-thousandths == 3 * 0.001 not 0.001 / 3.
7 * 0.001ms = 0.007ms or 7us or 7000ns.
The Lab uses multiple systems to image these high-speed events:
• pRad uses proton radiography to get 20–40 frames of a detonation, with material-level resolution based on density.
• DARHT uses dual-axis x-ray imaging to create 3D snapshots from two angles, ideal for testing whether the computational models built from pRad hold up.
• Scorpius (in development) will take this a step further by using subcritical plutonium in a new accelerator at NNSS, capturing multiple high-resolution frames just nanoseconds apart.
The fact that they can tailor experiments based on frame-by-frame behavior of individual materials under explosive stress feels like the real-world version of “bullet time” physics modeling. The margins of error come down to billionths of a second.
I'm guessing we'll see more hidden spending in future as the nukes and the engineers that made them get older. its worth asking if they even work (in some countries arsenals at least)
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
[0] https://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/trillionfps/
EDIT: Video with explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtsXgODHMWk
Is it not obvious that if you're writing an article proclaiming to capture _explosions_ at 7mths of a second, people want to see some pictures of said explosions?
Clearly they're understanding that explosions are a hook to grab the reader's attention, but then they just don't include any of the resulting pictures?
C'mon y'all! We need to do better here!