If you could sit perfectly still in a patch of space far from any stars, planets, or particles — utter emptiness — you might expect nothing at all to happen. No heat, no sound, no light. But the universe is never truly still. And the vacuum is never truly empty.
In the strange realm of quantum physics, even the vacuum seethes with invisible potential. Inside the apparent nothingness, so-called “virtual” particles flicker into and out of existence too quickly to see. Now, for the first time, physicists have simulated what it would look like if a flash of light were conjured from that void by making these invisible tremors suddenly visible.
This feat, led by researchers at the University of Oxford and the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, doesn’t just tickle the imagination. It marks a major step toward realizing one of quantum electrodynamics’ (QED) most bizarre predictions: that light can interact with itself in a vacuum, producing new beams from “nothing.”
“This is not just an academic curiosity — it is a major step toward experimental confirmation of quantum effects that until now have been mostly theoretical,” said Professor Peter Norreys, a co-author of the study published in Communications Physics.
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