Typical laser transmitters now consume 100s of femto-Joules to several pico-Joules of energy per bit.

FORBES: Stanford Engineers Unveil An Optical Breakthrough

Think of it this way: if we took one-thousandth of a second of footage from the femto camera video output and slowed it down to the speed of 30 seconds per frame -- the approximate speed of a standard TV broadcast -- it would take us a lifetime to watch.

CNN: A camera that can see around corners

Unlike conventional cameras, our femto camera captures an image as one thin slice at a time of one-dimensional space using a "streak tube, " a laboratory instrument that is commonly used by chemists to study light passing through chemical samples.

CNN: A camera that can see around corners