A careful alignment of three powerful lasers could generate a mysterious fourth beam of light that is throttled out of the very darkness itself.

What sounds like occult forces at work has been confirmed by a simulation of the kinds of quantum effects we might expect to emerge from a vacuum when ultra-high electromagnetic fields meet.

A team of researchers from the University of Oxford in the UK and the University of Lisbon in Portugal used a semi-classical equation solver to simulate quantum phenomena in real time and in three dimensions, testing predictions on what ought to occur when incredibly intense laser pulses combine in empty space.