Imagine staring out of your window on a strange scene of warped colours, bending light and regions that are in and out of focus. Either you have mistaken the window for the bottom of a pint glass, or your windowpane could be patterned with a series of nanometre-size holes. When photons strike a transparent solid that is patterned on the scale of the wavelength of light, they scatter at the interfaces and cause multiple interference. This can lead to intriguing optical properties where the laws of optics do not apply.
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