Under the right conditions, a chaotic mess of laser light can spontaneously self-organize into a highly focused "pencil beam." This schematic shows the pencil beam formation mechanism. Credit: MIT MIT researchers discovered a paradoxical phenomenon in optical physics that could enable a new bioimaging method that's faster and higher-resolution than existing technology. They discovered that, under the right conditions, a chaotic mess of laser light can spontaneously self-organize into a highly focused "pencil beam." Using this self-organized pencil beam, the researchers captured 3D images of the human blood-brain barrier 25 times faster than the gold-standard method, while maintaining comparable resolution. By showing individual cells absorbing drugs in real-time, this technology could help scientists test whether new drugs for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's or ALS reach their targets in the brain, with greater speed and resolution.…