alienation news

Interference of white light produces coloured patterns

Interference of white light produces coloured patterns," explains a British physicist, "because the different wavelengths in the light add and subtract differently at different places." He has combined colour theory and wave physics to look more closely than ever before at the calm water - the dark light. They have used a computer model to simulate the interference patterns produced by two light waves. Where peak and trough meet to cancel each other out they see a region of dark light called a phase singularity. "In these special places the phase of the wave is undefined, just as time is undefined at the North Pole," he says. "However, the colours hidden in the darkness can be predicted," he adds, "by magnifying the intensity there, the colours form characteristic and striking patterns. These theoretically predicted colours of dark light have yet to be investigated experimentally but the work predicts many different colour patterns in the dark light.