A movie photographer has finished what no different in historical past has by capturing photos of the very material of the universe.
Tom Liggett, a pictures scholar at Bournemouth University, despatched clean unfavorable movie, sealed in a plastic bag, to a dizzying top of 120,000 ft (36.5 km) utilizing a helium balloon.
Up within the stratosphere, at an altitude thrice greater than business airways cruise, cosmic rays burned themselves into the emulsion of Liggett’s movie, revealing ethereal patterns not seen to the human eye.
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Speaking to the BBC, Liggett mentioned: “We’ve kind of deduced it to be UVC (short-wavelength, high-intensity) radiation, the radiation that exists above the ozone layer, because obviously there’s no filter up there.”
“Then cosmic radiation and muons from black holes, like billions of light-years away,” he added.
Liggett spent two months testing different photographic emulsions under varying levels of radiation—including hospital X-rays—to determine which would hold up best in space.
He then approached the US-based marketing agency Filmed In Space, which sends clients’ products to the upper reaches of the stratosphere with an onboard camera to record promotional materials.
After traveling to the launch site in New York, Liggett watched as, on May 02 2025, the weather balloon carrying his film began its journey to 120,000 ft. High above Earth, the balloon traveled a further 417,000 ft laterally before popping and returning to the surface, with Liggett recovering it using a tracking device.
Speaking to the BBC about the images he later developed in the lab at Bournemouth University, Liggett said, “I actually think it’s a more accurate representation of space than a photograph is,” including that: “It’s capturing the actual molecular formula of space.”
Liggett later modified the identify of Project X to Helios I, submitting the cosmic prints as his second-year college remaining mission.
And based on an Instagram post earlier this 12 months, he’s already despatched movie to house twice extra, with the outcomes of initiatives Helios II and Helios II to be printed later this 12 months, though Liggett hasn’t specified when.
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