structuredlight
Latest
Scientists make a Mobius strip of laser light
Unless you count incidents in Star Trek episodes, Möbius strips don't really occur in nature -- you have to create that freaky one-sided shape yourself. However, a worldwide team of scientists may have produced the next best thing. They've created a Möbius strip of light by manipulating the polarization of the light's inherent electromagnetic field. The trick involves firing a highly focused laser beam through a liquid crystal lens to give it a very specific polarization. When the light scatters at the focal point with the help of a nanoparticle, that polarization creates tiny, twisted loops. While these strips were made in a lab, of course, the experiment shows that they're at least possible in nature.
