Image Captures Light's Spooky Dual Nature for 1st Time

It's a wave. It's a particle. It's … both.

Scientists have long known that light can act as a particle or a wave, depending on the experiment. But for the first time, scientists have captured a glimpse of light acting as both a wave and particles at the same time. This strange behavior is a consequence of quantum mechanics, bizarre rules of physics that govern the behavior of subatomic particles.

"This experiment demonstrates that, for the first time ever, we can film quantum mechanics — and its paradoxical nature — directly," study co-author Fabrizio Carbone, a researcher at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, said in a statement.