Glow with the flow (Image: Physical Review Letters) Laser light has been trapped on two different curved surfaces (Image: U Peschel et al.)

LIGHT, which in everyday experience travels in straight beams, has been trapped on complex curved surfaces. The feat is not just a parlour trick – it could help people visualise how light travels in the curved fabric of space.

According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravity is the result of an object’s mass deforming space itself, like a bowling ball on a trampoline. To model how light’s path would change in space curved by gravity, Ulf Peschel of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in …