Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. In a discovery that challenges conventional optics, scientists have managed to make a laser beam cast its own shadow—a feat ...

Researchers have found that under certain conditions, a laser beam can act like an opaque object and cast a shadow, opening new possibilities for technologies that could use a laser beam to control ...

Neutrino lasers: It’s an idea that many physicists didn’t see coming. At first glance, physics suggests that it would be impossible to make a laser of neutrinos, famously elusive subatomic particles.

Scientists at MIT discovered that chaotic laser light can spontaneously form a highly focused beam instead of scattering—if ...

Eerie beams of light are appearing at night along both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, and it didn’t take long for “UFO abduction rays” and “aliens beaming down” to enter the online discussion. In ...

The search for extraterrestrial life isn't limited to robots digging around in the giant sandbox we call Mars. In fact, scientists involved in SETI — the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — ...

MIT researchers have built a nanoscale photonic device shaped like a tiny ski jump that launches laser light directly off a silicon chip and steers it through free space. Reported by MIT on March 11, ...

Can light itself cast a shadow? It may sound like a philosophical riddle, but researchers have found that under certain conditions, a laser beam can act like an opaque object and cast a shadow. The ...

For the experiment, a high-power green laser was directed through ruby cube and illuminated with a blue laser from the side. The green laser increases the optical absorption of the blue illuminating ...