14 DAY TRIAL // We've thought to accept the light travels in the universe in a straight trajectory. However, this statement isn't entirely true. Albert Einstein predicted through his Theory of Relativity, that in fact light passing through a curved area of space would be slightly bent. This process usually takes place due to powerful gravitational fields produced by massive bodies, such as stars, and black hole, or a huge accumulation of mass, like a galaxy for example.
Such massive objects produce a severe space-time warp in the fabric of the universe, generating the gravitational lensing effect, which is generally used in astronomy to view distant cosmic structures, by pointing the telescopes in the direction of the gravitational lens, which provides an amplification of light. However, the fact that powerful gravitational fields are needed in order to obtain this light bending effect poses mankind with an inability to take advantage of it, since we don't have yet the capability of manipulating gravity for our own purposes.
Nevertheless, Romanian physicist Aristide Dogariu, researcher at the University of Central Florida, in collaboration with Demetrios Christodoulides seems to have gone around the gravitational fields problem, by using a simple Liquid Crystal Diode screen to bend light. LCD screens are mostly used as displays for multiple electronic devices, such as computers or mobile phones, however, the LCD device used by the researchers was especially designed to control how light passed through it, thus bending it in the process.
The half of million pixel LCD produces a one-millimeter bend in the trajectory of light, while shined with a half-inch wide laser beam, passing through a 35-centimeter stretch of the screen. The special configuration of the LCD screen causes the light to travel through it and to bend in the brightest area of the beam, as light interferes with itself.
Light bending techniques present special interest, for they might provide the technology to develop new communication mediums, advances in microscopes, and probably could trigger a new digital age.