Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have created a camera that can capture how light moves as it goes through and around objects. The camera may be used to observe body processes, study quantum phenomena, and eventually develop invisibility cloaks. Compressed Ultrafast Photography (CUP), as the technique is known, achieves an incredible speed by converting photons to electrons and recording the time and space data needed to create an image.

Compressed Ultrafast Photography uses technology that’s similar to streak cameras. “With CUP, the photons necessary to take an image are blasted through a beam splitter and then through a tube that has several tiny mirrors,” Motherboard reports.

Then those photons are converted into electrons and creates an image in one billionth of a second.

CUP has made it possible for researchers to study some of the fastest phenomena on earth, including laser pulse reflections, photons racing through air, and “faster-than light propagation of non-information.” The new technology may someday be responsible for new discoveries in science. One idea is to combine the speed of CUP with the resolution of the Hubble Telescope to see things that have never been seen before in space.

The camera could also be used to help people not see things. Now that researchers will be able to see how light bends and goes through different objects, they may have better ideas about how to bend the light around the object to make it appear as if it is not there.