Optical illusions occur naturally in different habitats and conditions across the world. Cloud formations can sometimes make it seem like there's an ocean or a UFO in the sky. Whether it is salt flats ...

Earth's passage through the plane of Saturn's rings, occurring roughly every 15 years, causes the rings to appear nearly edge-on. The next such event in March 2025 will be poorly observable due to ...

Researchers have experimentally realized an optical effect predicted over 75 years ago: the Tellegen effect, where electric ...

In a study published in Reports on Progress in Physics, researchers have achieved device-independent characterization of genuinely entangled subspaces (GESs) in both optical and superconducting ...

Ever since they were discovered in 2018, fast blue optical transients (FBOTs) have utterly surprised and completely confounded both observational and theoretical astrophysicists. So hot that they glow ...

In June 2023, something extraordinary happened over the Alabama River—an optical phenomenon turned it into a shimmering golden dragon, visible only from space. Captured by an astronaut aboard the ...

Postdoctoral research fellow Xiao Qi in the laser room at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry. Qi used the setup to develop a new optical computing material from nanoparticles that exhibit a phenomenon ...

Quantitative phase imaging (QPI) is a microscopy technique widely used to investigate cells and tissues. Even though first biomedical applications based on QPI have been developed, both acquisition ...

Everyone loves an optical illusion — even if they leave us completely stumped — and they're all around us in the natural world. From an underwater waterfall in the Indian Ocean to a surrealist scene ...