© Eliza Grinnell and Nanfang YuTop, clockwise from left: Patrice Genevet, Nanfang Yu, Federico Capasso, Zeno Gaburro, and Mikhail A. Kats. Bottom: A simulation of the image that would appear in a large mirror patterned with the team's new phase mirror technology.
In a mind-bending, and light-bending, discovery, scientists have produced a fun-house-like warping of light that defies existing laws of physics.
For centuries, simple equations (taught every year to high-school physics students) have described
how light moves through different media, for example from air into glass. Now, however, researchers have found that if the boundary between media is sufficiently complex (in this case, coated with nano-sized wires), those laws no longer apply.
The discovery has prompted the physicists to rewrite the traditional equations to account for the characteristics of the boundary surface. In most cases where these tweaked equations are applied, the new laws simplify back to their traditional forms, but sometimes, they show that light can behave in incredibly strange ways.
"Using designer surfaces, we've created the effects of a fun-house mirror on a flat plane," researcher Federico Capasso of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences said in a statement. "Our discovery carries optics into new territory and opens the door to exciting developments in photonics technology."
In addition to stirring up the laws of physics, the new finding allowed the researchers to create some wacky pictures. For instance, they simulated an image of their lab group as it would appear in a mirror coated with nano-wires. The result: a portrait of conehead-looking scientists. [
See images]
Comment: The public should be sceptical - the money behind this phony "science" knows full well that this is all a distraction and deliberate diversion of public funds, away from those areas of scientific research where funding and attention is desperately needed, like working out how to screen for psychopathology from ALL positions of social responsibility and developing mitigation and preparedness systems in the event of imminent Earth Changes and the Sixth Extinction awaiting humanity at the bottom of the looming cliff, not to mention the fact that an Ice Age is coming.