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What do you get when you combine light beams with bullets? Scientists in Greece and France teamed up to find out in their ring-Airy beams experiment.

It involves a particular shape of light waves that focus itself more intensely as it travels. When a high-intensity light source is focused into precise ring-Airy blips, the beam forms into "light bullets". It travels further and more predictable than conventional Gaussian laser beams.

Instead of becoming the stuff of sci-fi ammo, the light bullets could have a great use in industrial and medical environs. Aiming at tumors would be so much easier now. [Nature Communications via PhysOrg]