What is the purpose of light? How does light work? Why does light exist? This video explores the longstanding debate over ...

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 speed of light is a fundamental constant, approximately 299,792,458 meters per second. It's the same for all observers and hasn't changed measurably over billions of years. Nothing can travel ...

Ultrathin structures that can bend, focus, or filter light, metasurfaces are reshaping how scientists think about optics. These engineered materials offer precise control over lights behavior, but ...

Black holes can’t be formed from pure light. Quantum physics would curb their creation under any foreseeable conditions, a new study suggests. Typically, matter is responsible for black holes. They’re ...

Gravity can turn itself into light, but only if space-time behaves in just the right way, a research team has found. Under normal circumstances, you cannot get something from nothing. Specifically, ...

Under the sea ice during the Arctic’s pitch-black polar night, cells power photosynthesis on the lowest light levels ever observed in nature. Most of life’s engines run on sunlight. Photons filter ...

The 2023 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three scientists who created pulses of light so short they can be used to watch the inner workings of atoms. Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and ...

An international team of physicists has cooked up with a new theory that could allow for objects to travel faster than the speed of light — and while they say it wouldn’t technically violate the laws ...

Some things we see in space appear to outpace light. Now we are learning to harness these bizarre optical illusions to ...