I learned in October 2022’s Breakthrough that the spikes of stars in high-power photos are called diffraction spikes. Why do they appear as two crosses at 45 degrees to each other? The diffraction ...

When two or more light waves interact with one another, they result in the formation of different interference patterns. British physicist Thomas Young first demonstrated and explained these patterns ...

It may sound like an oxymoron, but inside a beam of light, there is darkness. Certain points within a complex light wave go completely dark, spots where the wave cancels itself out so thoroughly that ...

Scientists have proposed a surprising new way to detect gravitational waves—by observing how they change the light emitted by ...

Cooled to almost absolute zero, atoms not only move in waves like light but also can be focused into shapes called caustics, similar to the reflecting or refracting patterns light makes on the bottom ...

In a first, scientists have shown that they can send light through “slits in time” in time. The new experiment is a twist on a 220-year-old demonstration, in which light shines through two slits in a ...