Even our most advanced screens today have a limitation that makes them distinctly still feel like, well, screens: they're flat. They can display entire worlds with a level of detail that just a couple of decades ago was incomprehensible, but we never quite feel what we see. That missing sense may be the next frontier between digital images and physical experience.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) may have found a way across that frontier by turning light itself into touch. Their new display technology is made up of tiny pixels that rise into little bumps when they're struck by controlled pulses of laser light. Images are given a whole new dimension; they literally lift off the surface, forming shapes you can trace with your fingertips.