LITMIR.BIZ

      Take a look at the picture, curious reader. Number (3) indicates a source of coherent light, a laser pointer. (4) – diffraction grating. Here the light is split into many coherent rays. If you put a piece of paper in the path of this mixture, we will see a speckle. That is, a set of black and white (or, indeed, red and black) dots, similar to what we see on an unset TV screen. In the black areas, according to textbooks, the crossed beams (1,2) are added in antiphase. And, therefore, they disappear for a while for the world.

      What if, in such an invisible state, light completely ceases to interact with gross matter? In particular, with hitherto impenetrable screens? Having passed the prescribed paths without any extinction, the rays go out of each other and appear to the astonished observer as if emerging from the void?!..

      …We charge the camera (7) with a film of 400 light sensitivity units. Instead of a lens, we have a tube (6). The obstacle in the path of light is metal foil. We turn on the laser, open the shutter for a few hours. We expect that the paired rays, having overcome the screen in the region of space (5), will disperse inside the tube and illuminate the photographic film. It would be interesting. Something like an X-ray with light in the optical range.

      But the miracle did not happen. Photos turned out without flare.

      …The beams do not stack in antiphase. One wave with its “top” does not close the “bottom” of another. Where there is darkness, there is simply nothing. Physics textbooks indicate something like this, contradicting themselves, and not revealing the essence of the phenomenon.

      Let’s try to formulate the unsaid.

      The rays, or what looks like that, are distributed in space by the diffraction grating itself. It is this wonderful set of identical “rods” that decides where the light will be and where the darkness will be.