The fastball can’t get any faster, we’ve seen a changeup (slow light) and a knuckleball (aberration from atmospheric turbulence), so now High-Intensity Lasers Throw Scientists a Curve

OK, let’s start with the bad:

Researchers defy the laws of physics by making a laser beam bend

I really dislike that phrase, and whenever it’s used invariably the story goes on to explain how the phenomenon follows the laws of physics and it’s really just the researchers being clever in how they can manipulate one of the variables. As they did here — they reshaped the beam profile of the laser.

The researchers reshaped the profile of these pulses into that of an Airy beam using a thin plate of glass with a particular variation of thickness across the plate. “The phase shifts introduced by this plate turn the bullets from round in shape to the Airy beam that looks more like a triangle,” Polynkin says.

The beam ionizes the air along its path, which shifts the trajectory of the beam. Within limits.

Overall, the self-bending beam does have its limits—the bullets do not deviate from a straight line by more than the beam’s diameter. “If the beam is one centimeter [in diameter],” Polynkin says, “it won’t curve more than one centimeter.”

(Candy Cummings is the purported inventor of the curveball)