Noise is commonly considered harmful to signal transmission. Nonetheless, it still carries a remarkable amount of energy that can come in handy in certain situations -- if used in the right way!

In this experiment, for example, we used "non-linear" material -- which is known to alter the behavior of light in strange ways -- in order to extract the energy from noise. Thus an obscured image -- in this case, an image of Olympic rings -- emerged as a clear pattern.

The process is akin to improving poor TV reception using the distorted, or “noisy,” part of the broadcast signal.