Like twins separated at birth who are later reunited, two laser beams revealed invisible objects in a display of their weird quantum connection, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The images, of tiny cats and a trident, are an advance for quantum optics, an emerging physics discipline built on surprising interactions among subatomic particles that Einstein famously called "spooky." (Related: "Teleportation: Behind the Science of Quantum Computing.")

A conventional camera captures light that bounces back from an object. But in the experiment reported in the journal Nature, light particles, or photons, that never strike an object are the ones that produce its picture.

"Even other physicists say 'you can't do that' at first, but that is quantum behavior for you, very strange,"