Diffraction spikes, visible in high-power astronomical images, are an intrinsic optical phenomenon in reflecting telescopes, primarily caused by the diffraction and subsequent interference of incoming ...

Perhaps one of the most famous experiments in physics has been giving us the wrong message all these years. For nearly two centuries, the double-slit experiment has been providing a direct visual ...

Increasingly complex applications such as artificial intelligence require ever more powerful and power-hungry computers to run. Optical computing is a proposed solution to increase speed and power ...

When two or more light waves interact with one another, they result in the formation of different interference patterns. British physicist Thomas Young first demonstrated and explained these patterns ...

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 ...