A recent study published in an online issue of Physical Review Research examines the connections between the different properties of light, specifically pertaining to whether light acts as a wave or ...

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 ...

Long before quantum mechanics existed, a scientist developed a powerful way of describing motion by drawing an analogy between particles and light.

The Irish mathematician and physicist William Rowan Hamilton, who was born 220 years ago last month, is famous for carving some mathematical graffiti into Dublin's Broome Bridge in 1843. But in his ...

Even diffuse objects like clouds or sugar cubes cast shadows, because they’re disordered media that scatter light waves. But now, researchers at TU Wien and Utrecht University have found a way to ...

Light propagating in an optical fibre can make a tiny glass sphere nearby twist around on its axis. A theoretical analysis now explains why — and unexpectedly shows that the effect does not require ...

Classical physics theories suggest that when two or more electromagnetic waves interfere destructively (i.e., with their electric fields canceling each other out), they cannot interact with matter. In ...

Physicists have discovered that when beams of light interact at the quantum level, they can generate ghost-like particles that briefly emerge from nothing and affect real matter. This rare phenomenon, ...

Slowing down light is not as easy as it sounds. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The phenomenon of light slowing down as it passes ...

The ancient Greeks conceived of five building blocks of matter – from bottom to top: earth, water, air, fire and aether. Aether was the matter that filled the heavens and explained the rotation of the ...