I learned in October 2022’s Breakthrough that the spikes of stars in high-power photos are called diffraction spikes. Why do they appear as two crosses at 45 degrees to each other? The diffraction ...

Imperial physicists have recreated the famous double-slit experiment, which showed light behaving as particles and a wave, in time rather than space. The experiment relies on materials that can change ...

Where there's water, there are waves. But what if you could bend water waves to your will to move floating objects? Scientists have now developed a technique to merge waves in a water tank to produce ...

"These single atoms are like the smallest slits you could possibly build." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. For over 100 years, ...

In a first, scientists have shown that they can send light through “slits in time” in time. The new experiment is a twist on a 220-year-old demonstration, in which light shines through two slits in a ...

New ultrafast method for controlling magnetic materials might enable next-generation information processing technologies. This illustration shows that a pair of intense THz laser pulses drives spin ...