The direction in which the electromagnetic field of circularly polarized light rotates can be easily reversed by applying a ...

The ExoLife Finder (ELF) looks like no telescope ever built. A spectacular crown of 15 five-meter mirrors perches atop a ...

A new holographic storage technique uses light in three dimensions to dramatically increase how much data can be stored. It encodes information throughout a material using amplitude, phase, and ...

A luminous swirl set against the deep black of space, the barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with a soft, ethereal light in this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Month image. IC 486 ...

Helical liquid crystals can reverse the 'handedness' of light through the application of ultralow electric fields.

Jordan Roach uses a Raman microscope to examine a sample of U3O8 affixed to carbon tape on an aluminum stub. Roach uses Raman ...

For decades, astronomers have been puzzled by strange “zebra stripe” patterns in radio waves from the Crab Pulsar — bright bands separated by complete darkness. Now, new research suggests the answer ...

A single MXene-based optical gate switches between seven Boolean logic functions via voltage, enabling trainable photonic ...

Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have measured “dark points” inside light waves that appear to ...

In biology, defects are generally bad. But in materials science, defects can be intentionally tuned to give materials useful ...

The best images of the Nature Photography Contest have been decided, and we can't imagine it was an easy task for the judges – as just picking some, not all, to showcase here has been a huge challenge ...

Research in microgravity offers unique insights into materials science, improving crystal formation and advancing the ...