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Physics

Laser beams have gravity and can warp the fabric of the universe

By Leah Crane

27 September 2018

A laser

Lasers emit a very small amount of gravity

sakkmesterke/Alamy

Light is heavy. Powerful laser beams have a gravitational field, which warps the fabric of the universe around them and may help us understand how gravity behaves in the quantum realm.

Most models of light’s gravity are simple. They only take into account light’s behaviour as a particle but not as a wave when, in fact, it is both. Fabienne Schneiter at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany and her colleagues made a mathematical model that takes into account light’s wave nature, illuminating its tiny but weird…

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