For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that negative refraction can be achieved using atomic arrays - without the need for artificially manufactured metamaterials. Scientists have long ...

Here, a calcite crystal is struck with a laser operating at 445 nanometers, fluorescing and displaying properties of birefringence. Unlike the standard picture of light breaking into individual ...

French painters Jean Siméon Chardin and Édouard Manet both created well-known paintings that depicted children blowing bubbles through straw-like tubes, albeit painted more than a century apart. Those ...

In 1845, physicist Michael Faraday provided the first direct evidence that electromagnetism and light are related. Now, it turns out that this connection is even stronger than Faraday imagined. In his ...

A twist in the universe's first light could hint that scientists need to rethink physics. A pair of Japanese scientists looked at the polarization or orientation of light from the cosmic microwave ...

Light is well known to exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties, as imaged here in this 2015 photograph. What's less well appreciated is that matter particles also exhibit those wave-like ...