THERE’S a limit to how many movies you can get onto a DVD and how many
transistors onto a silicon chip—the wavelength of light. This is because
physicists use light to record bits of data or make tiny components, but have
been unable to focus light to a spot smaller than that light’s wavelength. But
now a British researcher says he can focus light to a spot hundreds of times
smaller than its wavelength using an entirely new sort of lens.
The traditional view of light is of oscillating electric and magnetic fields
propagating neatly through space. Conventional lenses…
