When people look into a mirror, they see an image of themselves behind the glass. That image results from light rays encountering the shiny surface and bouncing back, or reflecting, providing a ...

Exploiting a novel technique called phase discontinuity, researchers have induced light rays to behave in a way that defies the centuries-old laws of reflection and refraction. The discovery has led ...

Refraction close refractionProcess by which a wave changes speed and sometimes direction upon entering a denser or less dense medium, eg a light ray changes direction when refracted by a lens. of ...

Introduction Can you imagine a bouncy ball that could bounce back and forth between two walls, infinitely—that is, forever? Wouldn't that be amazing? What if, instead of a ball, light was bouncing ...

Can we turn back time? Ask a savvy physicist, and the answer will be “it depends.” Schemes for retrograde time travel abound but usually involve irreconcilable paradoxes and rely on outlandish ...

Sketch of the concept: a disordered medium (top) is made perfectly transmitting by placing a custom-made anti-reflection coating in front of it (bottom). (Courtesy: TU Wien) A new technique that ...