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 ...

Physicists have uncovered how direct atom-atom interactions can amplify superradiance, the collective burst of light from ...

The Nobel Physics Prize was awarded on Tuesday to three scientists for their work on attoseconds, which are almost unimaginably short periods of time. Their work using lasers gives scientists a tool ...

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 ...

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 ...

A spectrograph splits light ... Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of ...

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