The light from a distant star shimmers like ripples on water. This ripple hides the planets orbiting the star. To see them, you need to freeze the ripple — make the light steady.
Conventional instruments take several snapshots in a row and compare them. That's slow, and the ripple changes very quickly. The new device takes a single snapshot. It takes a portion of the starlight through a tiny hole, about the thickness of a hair, and mixes it with the rest of the light. This produces two images: one with fringes, one without. The difference between them reveals which way the ripple tilted.
So far, the device has removed the ripple over only a third of the needed area. But the scientists know how to fix that. In November 2026, the device will be installed on a real telescope. If all goes well, it will help us see Earth-like planets.
The 71-micrometer aperture for the reference beam, about the thickness of a human hair, was laser-cut into an aluminum plate measuring 2.54×2.54 cm.