Can light beams be made to curve? Not possibly by obeying the laws of nature, but an optical trick can fool our eyes into believing that light rays can actually be bended. It is believed that light beams while passing through a black hole in which the strong gravitational field has developed by the collapsed mass of the dead star can warp time and space causing any ray of light to be twisted when entering the black hole. This is only a theoretically possible method of bending the light beam. In reality, researchers at the University of Central Florida have used a LCD screen to make the light beam appear twisted to human eye.
The liquid crystal screen through which a beam of half-inch-wide laser rays were made to pass, caused the rays of the laser beam to interfere with each other in such a way that the brightest part of the beam appeared to move in a curved path. The new technology by which light beams could be bended would help in telecommunications and development of advanced microscopes.
Source & image:msnbc
