these were two of my books
favorites of which when I was little
a collection of how to make codes
secrets how to decode messages
a little later the three
researchers a group of young people who
they were dedicated to discover mysteries and
many mysteries also required
deciphering messages hit me hours
reading these books
a little later it fell into my hands
is from a book by Carl Sagan
a group of astronomers detected a
message to the indigenous and despite the
importance of the discovery the
message itself that is a sequence
prime numbers does not seem to be anything else
that a sophisticated way of telling us
wave until the astronomers discovered
in a second message and then a third
message hidden in the polarization
of light and I will not reveal anything else
about the book but I will tell you the
fascination that this idea gave me the
light transmitting a message inside and
another message as the
aliens to convey a message
in the polarization of light
as we know light is a wave if
they travel a vertical plane has
vertical polarization
if they travel a horizontal plane has
horizontal polarization but also
you can have with circular station
as it is rotating in
counter-clockwise while advancing and
this what the aliens used to
your code in the polarization a 1 if
the light turned clockwise and a
It is zero if you turn counterclockwise and
this sequence of ones and zeros hidden
in the polarization of light is the
definitive message the novel contact
of course code the light to
transmit messages is not heritage
exclusive of alien minds
we do it every day for
example with the traffic lights the
traffic lights codex
the wavelength the color for
tell us and we must stop or continue or
as we know we can create sequences
temporary light to transmit
messages I do not come here to talk today about
messages to the indigenous but how
code the light and apply it in
photography but our goal is not going
to be only create better
photographs our goal to go a
little beyond we will try to be
able to see the invisible
here we have a 1934 camera how
the camera worked then
we had a lens that focuses rays a
chemical sensor that produces the image
final a current camera works
exactly the same only in this case
the sensor is a digital sensor and this is
the key that opens a world almost
infinite possibilities because what
digital as we know at the end of the day
it’s just a sequence of ones and
zeros that we can code and
decode and practically manipulate
the will
the idea of using computation images
is not new
this is the image of santorini in greece
taken with a mobile phone
nevertheless this is the image that never
has existed is a reconstruction
computational that has been done in the
own phone
from these three images and here
these three images have been known
to give you an image that I insist
has existed well with this idea of
computing then we go back to
focus on how we can see what
invisible to what is a photograph of a
ticket the conventional photograph with
a normal camera
we all know that we use a macro
we can capture many details
small ones like for example the head
tiny of the eagle that visa and without
However, a photo is by definition
two-dimensional and we lose all
details of the micro geometry of the
what we are photographing that
texture that the ticket has when I
we play we will remember codified light
in time to convey a message
based on this idea we have built the
next micro disco is a dome
of this size more or less with a
lots of lights that we can turn on and
turn off will creating infinity of
beige codes a hole on top of and
place a normal camera that aims
down
we put our dollar bill
below
we activate a sequence of codes of
light at the time of taking the photograph and
the result is the following
as you see we have managed to capture are not
the details that we capture a macro
but that feeling of
three-dimensional photography
only by applying a code in the
lighting sequence of it
this can be useful for example for
create new mechanisms to detect
fake currency
here we have another example that
surely we all recognize all
we have ever done photographs so
horrible as it is out of focus where
the details have been lost
apparently forever
this happens because when a scene
is out of focus every point of the
scene is transformed into the so-called
circle of confusion that is what
smudges the whole image and
observation fundamental realize
that this circle of confusion is
related to the shape of the opening
of the camera that is circular
we have designed a method where
just print another pattern
different according to transparent plastic
cut it out, place it on the lens and
now the scene is out of focus
instead of a circle of confusion that
point will follow the pattern of your new
drawing and with that we do the photography
and we went through this
to this where we can discover details
as the title of the book
the letters that give the texture of the background
or even the face of the doll
let’s change the third let’s see
now ultra-fast events so
fast that is hard to see by eye
naked this kind of video are by and
over the internet they are very popular for sure
that you have seen but require
cameras that are capable of capturing
thousands of frames per second
these cameras can cost
up to 100 thousand dollars using
computing
we will be able to create to capture
the same type of events but using
a conventional camera and what is
more interesting still a single
photography as an example the flame of
this meteor understood this is the
only photograph that we capture of
the whole event
but if you look at this area we see
that is not a conventional photograph
we see nap we will be white patterns and
black an optical code that we have
introduced with a mask so
a bit similar to the previous idea and
thanks to this pattern to this code
that we introduce when doing
single photograph we can reconstruct
the whole event of the flame
lighting up in slow motion
well let’s move on to another example the
last maybe my favorite
two or three years ago working in the
Haitian we asked ourselves what other scenes
very fast would be difficult to
capture we look for a challenge that exists
in the world that is practically
impossible to capture so fast that
it’s even with the best cameras
existing
after a lot of thinking we arrived at the
obvious solution light all over the
physical we know nothing can be
faster than light to 300 thousand
kilometers per second
light is the fastest thing that exists in
the universe
there we had the interesting challenge
we can capture light in movement
I will not go into the details of the process
It was long but I’m going to show you
the final scene think that to capture
look movement we are a trillion
frames per second which is
mechanically impossible to get
we are then to support ourselves again in the
computing and this is our result
what you see is a little martian of
plastic toy placed in front of
a mirror that happens when we give light
this experience it is every day
when you go masons the light that happens
we see the doll and we see its reflection
and it happens so quickly that our
brain records in the two events as
simultaneous but we think what
is happening to give birth the
photons have to travel from the source
from light to toy toy to the mirror
from the mirror to the eyes and 300 thousand
kilometers per second
our brain detects it as
simultaneous but they are not events
simultaneous
Well now you are going to see for the first time
how a reflection of the mirror is formed
I put it back on, the toy lights up
no reflection still appears little to
little reflection because photons have
lost in getting to the mirror
[Applause]
we have seen a series of examples of
how to see the invisible through the
computing exceed the limits of the
mechanical physics through
computing but we do not want to stop
and we want to keep thinking about challenges
not 12 years old but five to ten years
twenty years seen working on problems
that seem absurdly difficult
but start working on it since
we are currently collaborating with nasa
in a project to explore the
caves of the moon
the idea is that they sent astronaut to
to explore them is dangerous and expensive to send
a robot is expensive when this technology
of one trillion frames per second
maybe we could bomb the caves
of the photon moon let the
photons bounce around the caves and arrive
again to the camera sensor and to that
speed we can ask
individually to each photo where they have
been and have seen and rebuilt the
information from everyone to create that
map of the water of the moon
without ever entering it and this
project is interesting not only for the
scientific challenge or to work with
NASA in an exploration project
space
for me it is particularly stimulating
because it is an example of an application
novelty that we never imagined
when we design our camera and this
for me it reinforces the message in the
need to remain curious about
address problems not because they are
simple and not because they are difficult to
return to recover the passion for
science for knowing to discover that
passion can be anywhere
for me
he came from boy with the books of
codes and secret messages and although the
present is stimulating the future is
much more because I do not know what novel of
science fiction should inspire us
we will extract more information from the light or
if in the end we will succeed with
our project to govern is because
in science many times as much
exciting is what you can not foresee
thank you very much
and
”
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