Warsaw, April 26 -- Scientists have created tiny "optical tornadoes" -- swirling beams of light that twist like miniature whirlwinds -- using a surprisingly simple setup based on liquid crystals. Instead of relying on complex nanotechnology, the team used self-organizing structures called torons to trap and manipulate light, causing it to spiral and rotate in intricate ways.

Even more impressively, they achieved this effect in light's most stable, lowest-energy state, making it far easier to generate laser-like beams with these unusual properties.

Can light spin like a whirlwind? Researchers have now shown that it can. Scientists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the Military University of Technology, and the Inst...