Physics Particles of light cannot be divided into smaller particles, but if you try to snip off the end of one, instead of shortening it multiplies Facebook / Meta Twitter / X icon Linkedin Reddit Email Cutting photons is infinitely weird Muhammad Fawaid/Alamy In Greek mythology, cutting one head off the Hydra of Lerna simply resulted in two more heads growing to replace it – and it turns out it’s even worse for photons. If you try to cut a piece off a particle of light, the result is infinitely many more of them being created. Some particles are elementary, which means that they cannot be broken into smaller pieces. For instance, a proton can be torn into three quarks, but each quark cannot be subdivided further. But what would happen if you tried to cut an elementary particle anyway? Johannes Skaar at the University of Oslo in Norway and his colleagues have looked into the case of a photon encountering a mirror that could do just this.…