According to the studies of quantum mechanics, light can act simultaneously as a particle and a wave. However, scientists have never been able to capture light in both of its forms at the same time— ...

Light's behavior seems counterintuitive. That is, until you figure out light is a wave. The way light behaves can seem very counterintuitive, and many physicists would agree with that, but once you ...

For over 100 years, quantum physics has taught us that light is both a wave and a particle. Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have performed a daring experiment using ...

Physicists at MIT recreated the double-slit experiment using individual photons and atoms held in laser light, uncovering the true limits of light’s wave–particle duality. Their results proved ...

Light behaves as both a wave and a particle, a paradox that has resisted complete explanation for over a century despite ...

Here, a calcite crystal is struck with a laser operating at 445 nanometers, fluorescing and displaying properties of birefringence. Unlike the standard picture of light breaking into individual ...

In 1676, by studying the motion of Jupiter's moon Io, Danish astronomer Ole Rømer calculated that light travels at a finite speed. Two years later, building on data gathered by Rømer, Dutch ...

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of How to Die in Space. A hypothetical particle known as the ...

"These single atoms are like the smallest slits you could possibly build." For over 100 years, quantum physics has taught us that light is both a wave and a particle. Now, researchers at the ...