When looking at a bracelet with transparent round beads, I sometimes wonder."Is this really quartz?"Things sold as quartz ...

The misconception that "if it is transparent and smooth, light passes through straight"1.1 Transparent, scratch-free lenses appear to let light pass through straightMany people think that precision le ...

Nothing is complicated because in physics even completely empty space is described as being full of quantum fields doing complicated things even when nothing else is there. One prediction that’s been ...

Transparent media such as glass, crystals, polymer films, optical components, and biological tissues are widely used in advanced manufacturing, photonic systems, precision instruments, and biomedical ...

Smoking gun? Artist’s impression of a magnetar. Polarized X-rays from such an object could contain evidence of vacuum birefringence. (Courtesy: ESA) The first direct glimpse of vacuum birefringence ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

Archival storage poses lots of challenges. We want media that is extremely dense and stable for centuries or more, and, ideally, doesn’t consume any energy when not being accessed. Lots of ideas have ...

Over the past decades, researchers have demonstrated conventional solitons, stretched pulses, self-similar pulses, and dissipative solitons by managing the dispersion and nonlinearity of fiber lasers.

A physicist’s do-it-yourself art project makes vibrant images with a pair of polarizers and carefully placed layers of transparent tape. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down universities and offices ...