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A SUPER twisty beam of light has been created that can distinguish between left and right-handed molecules with unprecedented precision.

Molecules often come in mirror images that can have different properties, and researchers take advantage of this 鈥渃hirality鈥� to design new drugs. They sort left from right versions using circularly polarised light, whose electric field corkscrews through space in a left or right-handed direction. Unfortunately, the technique often fails when the light鈥檚 coils are bigger than the molecules themselves.

Now Yiqiao Tang and Adam Cohen of Harvard University have created 鈥渟uperchiral鈥� light that twists very tightly in places. To make it, they shone a right-handed green laser beam at a mirror and let it interact with the left-handed reflection (Science, ).