Scientists Create Beautiful Iridescent Material That Could Be Edible
What makes something red, or blue, or green? It’s all in the way light bounces off its surface. Something that…
Microchip Breakthrough Could Help Us Build a New Kind of Computer
On Monday, a team of scientists in Australia announced an exciting breakthrough: For the first time, researchers were…
Incredible Video Reveals that Rainbows Actually Go All the Way Around
It turns out the recognizable half-circle arch of a rainbow is a complete lie. When you’re standing on the ground…
Insane Light System Blasts the Energy of 10,000 Suns
German scientists have constructed a powerful new light system that can focus energy equivalent to the radiation of…
Scientists Made Something Colder Than Ever Thought Possible
When it comes to cooling things in the lab, scientists have long found an experimental lower limit just above the…
Check Out How the Different Levels of Light Pollution Screws Us From Seeing Stars
It’s obvious to anyone with eyeballs that there ain’t no damn stars in the city, while there are about a gazillion and…
Water Does Some Really Weird Shit to Things
Water can do some trippy things, man. If you take a glass of water and slide it in front of a pattern, the refraction…
Seeing a 20,000 Watt Light Bulb Light Up Is Totally Blinding
I don’t know what 1,000 suns actually looks like in real life, but I would imagine it’s probably something like…
This Spinning Illusion Is Obviously Some Sort of Light Magic
I don’t know how these tiny dancers got trapped inside this spinning zoetrope but it’s the only explanation I can come…
These Images Were Taken With an Entirely New Kind of Photography
These beetles may look like two different species, but they’re the same individual. The difference lies in how they…
Inside Sydney's New Cathedral of Light
Every year, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Australia, hosts an event called Vivid Sydney: A festival of light,…
Scientists Discover a Weird New Type of Light
Not all light is made equal. Now, a team of physicists has discovered that photons can travel differently to any other…
What It's Like to Look Straight into a Rainbow
There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but there are some colorful visuals you can trip out on if you can…
Scientists Made LEDs 60 Percent Brighter By Copying Firefly Lanterns
A team of researchers has managed to boost the amount of light an LED emits by 60 percent simply by shaping its outer…
Laser-Powered Balls Can Haul Heavy Loads Across Water
They don’t look much, but these little black balls harness the power of bright light to zip across the surface of…
A New Solar Cell Creates Electricity From Water as Well as Light
Rain means clouds and clouds mean less sunlight. That’s bad news for most solar cells, but a new design can actually…
The World's Smallest Optical Switch Uses Just a Single Atom
Turning off a light just became a much smaller task. A team of researchers has developed the world’s smallest optical…
New Balloon-Like Material Could Make Smart Windows Affordable
The good minds at MIT have used a rubber-like polymer to predict how much light gets transmitted through a material,…
New York City Is Even More Stunning When the Light Hits It
New York is one of my favorite places in the world because of so many things but in certain moments (especially during…
This New Incandescent Bulb Uses Nano Mirrors to Match LED Bulb Efficiency
Energy-saving bulbs may have some competition in the shape of an ageing technology. Scientists have developed a new…