Imagine a whirlpool spinning in a river, or a tornado swirling through the sky. They don't just spin on the spot: they travel forward while maintaining that spiraling motion inside them. These twisting motions, called vortices, ...
Optics & Photonics
Aug 19, 2025
1
109
It sounds like science fiction: a spacecraft, no heavier than a paperclip, propelled by a laser beam and hurtling through space at the speed of light toward a black hole, on a mission to probe the very fabric of space and ...
Astronomy
Aug 7, 2025
0
25
Usually, light waves can pass through each other without any resistance. According to the laws of electrodynamics, two light beams can exist in the same place without influencing each other; they simply overlap. Light saber ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 28, 2025
1
90
How do we know exactly what is happening at a molecular level during extremely fast processes, such as burning during combustion? In less than the blink of an eye, one chemical compound and then another are present in a flame ...
Nanophysics
Jun 17, 2025
0
1
The reliable manipulation of the speed at which light travels through objects could have valuable implications for the development of various advanced technologies, including high-speed communication systems and quantum information ...
Beams of light that can be guided into corkscrew-like shapes called optical vortices are used today in a range of applications. Pushing the limits of structured light, Harvard applied physicists in the John A. Paulson School ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 11, 2025
0
150
A team of physicists and engineers at China's Hefei National Laboratory has succeeded in conducting the first instance of precise absolute distance measurement over a path exceeding 100 km. The group has written a paper describing ...
New research led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) has studied the migratory movement of groups of cells using light control. The results show that there is no leader cell that directs the collective ...
Biotechnology
Sep 16, 2024
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55
Both literally and figuratively, light pervades the world. It banishes darkness, conveys telecommunications signals between continents and makes visible the invisible, from faraway galaxies to the smallest bacterium. Light ...
Optics & Photonics
May 23, 2024
0
137
Optical wireless may no longer have any obstacles. A study by Politecnico di Milano, conducted together with Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, the University of Glasgow and Stanford University, and published in Nature Photonics, ...
Optics & Photonics
Nov 29, 2023
0
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