Recent content by caseytrimble

I know that prisms create dispersion and cause different frequencies of light to travel at different angles relative to the normal, and that the prism affects the wavelength and speed of the waves, but what exactly is the nature of this relationship? Other than spreading various frequencies out...

I'll be sure to try it, thank you for the information!

Parallel's the word. I was thinking of the angle that the rays make with a cross section plane along the path of the light.

And to clarify, when I say I "traced [the source] back to a nearby window," I failed to include that the source was a small hole in the blinds where the drawstring is threaded, and the image was at least 6 or 7 meters away. I should have included the relative sizes in my post.

Thanks, sophiecentaur, that makes sense. So basically if I use a light source that emits light with reasonably uniform vector angles, I wouldn't see this shape-changing effect?

I was walking through my house the other day and noticed a circle of light on the wall. I traced it back to a nearby window, but noticed that the opening was square. When I put my hand close to the opening, the light made a square, but as I walked backwards and kept my hand in the path of the...

The idea is pretty far fetched, but would it be theoretically possible for an image of our galaxy millions or billions of years ago to be reflected or refracted via gravitational lensing back to our current position in space-time?

I've thought about this approach and some of the implications of its success, and it creates (in my humble interpretation) a paradox of sorts. Assume that in the future some scientist does indeed discover a method of traveling back in time (the particulars of the method being irrelevant) and...