Some of the most thought-provoking work I came across when I was studying optics (laser physics) is referenced in this paper on "Optical Rogue Waves": https://a

Some of the most thought-provoking work I came across when I was studying optics (laser physics) is referenced in this paper on "Optical Rogue Waves": https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.3071.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.3071.pdf Rogue waves, made popular by their often ship-sinking behavior out at sea, are extremely rare and therefore difficult to study by waiting around for them to happen. Here, researchers inject noise into an otherwise stable laser system (recall that light is also a wave) that has some small nonlinear properties and rely on the high rate at which we can generate laser pules to observe rogue waves at a high enough volume to study their properties.