While listening to the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast, I heard an amazing fact: scientists at the University of California had created a camera capable of taking 6.1 million pictures in a single second. Talk about high-speed photography!

A little research turned up this article by Brandon Keim from Wired. The camera uses a laser to illuminate the subject of the photograph. The scientists call the technology serial time-encoded amplified microscopy, or STEAM.

Here’s a breakdown of what happens when they use the camera: the laser runs through a series of 3,000 different wavelengths of light. Each wavelength corresponds to a specific pixel on the sensor of the camera. When the sensor detects the light reflected back to the camera from the subject, it matches each wavelength to the appropriate pixel. The camera sends a matching wavelength to the pixel to compensate for the lack of light.