A new optics experiment makes a light beam appear to bend in air. The brightest patch of the beam also appears to travel with almost no spreading, unlike ordinary laser beams, as a team reports in the 23 November Physical Review Letters. The so-called Airy beam may lead to new kinds of optical engineering.

Impossible light. The Airy beam--now created in the lab--bends sideways by about 1 milimeter over the 35-centimeter section shown in this computer simulation (top, horizontal axis exaggerated). The two-dimensional version is shown with the beam facing us (bottom).