Light

Originally, I'd planned on telling you about this really cool research breakthrough out of Brown and Rice Universities. But then... well ... it took a turn because we really need to talk about terahertz waves and their potential impact on…

There are challenges in physics. For example, when light interacts with matter, light seems to slow down. When incident light (light that falls on a subject) is on an interface, the standard wave equation is satisfied on both sides. Solving…

Optical tweezers use light to immobilize microscopic particles as small as a single atom in 3D space. The principle behind the tweezers is the momentum transfer between light and the object held. Light pushes onto objects that make the…

While electrons gain and emit energy by being exposed to photons, photons themselves have always been resistant to magnetic field control. To develop futuristic technologies like quantum computers, scientists will need to find ways to…

Levitation may sound like the stuff of magic shows or New Age gurus, but California Institute of Technology researchers have designed a way to levitate and propel objects using only light, by creating specific nanoscale patterning on the…

Rather than building up plastic filaments layer by layer, a new approach to 3D printing lifts complex shapes from a vat of liquid at up to 100 times faster than conventional 3D printing processes. While 3D printing could change the game…