(Nanowerk Spotlight) A caustic is the envelope of light rays reflected or refracted by a curved surface or object, or the projection of that envelope of rays on another surface. A familiar example of ...

Scientists have discovered a universal principle that unites the curious interplay of light and shadow on the surface of your morning coffee with the way gravity magnifies and distorts light from ...

Multiple rays of light can coalesce and form bright focusing features known as caustics. These features are singularities of ray optics in the sense that their intensity, according to the ray ...

Caustics also show up in gravitational lensing, a phenomenon caused by galaxies so massive that their gravity bends and distorts light from more distant galaxies. "It turns out that their gravity is ...