For several years now, scientists have been using lasers to control the properties of matter at extremely fast rates: during one optical cycle of a light wave. But because these changes occur on the ...

appears—a rainbow, a sunset, a pulse of heat lightning in a dark sky, the shimmering surface of the sea at twilight, the dappled light in a forest, the little red dot from a professor's laser ...

Scientists have developed a method to track how lasers instantly change a material's transparency and conductivity on attosecond timescales, revealing ultrafast dynamics.