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Archive for the ‘tractor beam’ category: Page 2

May 13, 2023

Tractor beams: How scientists are turning science fiction into reality

Posted by in categories: futurism, tractor beam

Angel_nt/iStock.

Today we will learn all there is to know about tractor beams’ past, present, and future.

Jan 30, 2023

Scientists Actually Did It: They Built a Real Working Tractor Beam

Posted by in category: tractor beam

One that manipulates objects and everything.

Jan 27, 2023

Scientists Make Star Trek Technology Real With A Working Tractor Beam

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, particle physics, tractor beam

Scientists how now developed a mini tractor beam that can pull atoms and nanoparticles. Scientists have built a real working tractor beam, albeit at a very small scale. The device, which attracts one object to another from a distance, originates in fiction. The term was coined by E. E. Smith who mentioned the technology in his 1931 novel Spacehounds of IPC, and since the 1990s, researchers have worked to make it a reality.

Jan 21, 2023

Scientists Build a Teeny Tiny Tractor Beam

Posted by in categories: energy, engineering, tractor beam

Tractor beams make intuitive sense. Matter and energy interact with each other in countless ways throughout the Universe. Magnetism and gravity are both natural forces that can draw objects together, so there’s sort of a precedent.

But engineering an actual tractor beam is something different.

Jan 13, 2023

Researchers create an optical tractor beam that pulls macroscopic objects

Posted by in categories: particle physics, tractor beam

Researchers have developed a way to use laser light to pull a macroscopic object. Although microscopic optical tractor beams have been demonstrated before, this is one of the first times that laser pulling has been used on larger objects.

Light contains both energy and momentum that can be used for various types of optical manipulation such as levitation and rotation. Optical tweezers, for example, are commonly used scientific instruments that use laser light to hold and manipulate tiny objects such as atoms or cells. For the last ten years, scientists have been working on a new type of optical manipulation: using to create an optical tractor beam that could pull objects.

Continue reading “Researchers create an optical tractor beam that pulls macroscopic objects” »

Jun 9, 2022

Real-Life ‘Star Trek’ Tractor Beams Will Change How We Practice Medicine

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, tractor beam

Circa 2015


Star Trek’s ideal view of medicine is closer than we think.

Continue reading “Real-Life ‘Star Trek’ Tractor Beams Will Change How We Practice Medicine” »

Feb 15, 2022

New Advanced Light Tractor Beam Moving Atoms

Posted by in categories: particle physics, tractor beam

Researchers manage to build a light beam able to attract and repel particles about 100 times further than has been previously achieved.

Jan 10, 2022

Exotic Forces: Do Tractor Beams Break the Laws of Physics?

Posted by in categories: cosmology, genetics, quantum physics, tractor beam

It depends.

Warp drive. Site-to-site transporter technology. A vast network of interstellar wormholes that take us to bountiful alien worlds. Beyond a hefty holiday wish-list, the ideas presented to us in sci-fi franchises like Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” have inspired countless millions to dream of a time when humans have used technology to rise above the everyday limits of nature, and explore the universe.

Continue reading “Exotic Forces: Do Tractor Beams Break the Laws of Physics?” »

Jul 14, 2021

Acoustic Tractor Beam Can Grab Objects From Behind Obstacles

Posted by in categories: holograms, tractor beam

An acoustic tractor beam that can bend sound around an obstacle to levitate an object on the other side has been created by researchers in the UK. Dubbed SoundBender, the device combines an ultrasound transducer array with an acoustic metamaterial.

In recent years, researchers have used transducer arrays to build sonic tractor beams that can create complex acoustic holograms to manipulate objects in mid-air. Acoustic metamaterials are engineered materials with structural properties that do not usually occur naturally. They have been used to produce acoustic holograms, bend beams of sound and create static acoustic levitation devices. But the team behind the SoundBender, based at the University of Sussex, say that these technologies have key limitations.

Continue reading “Acoustic Tractor Beam Can Grab Objects From Behind Obstacles” »

Jun 23, 2021

Enhancement of the ‘tractor-beam’ pulling force on an optically bound structure

Posted by in category: tractor beam

Circa 2017


Recently, increasing attention has been devoted to mastering a new technique of optical delivery of micro-objects tractor-beam’1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Such beams have uniform intensity profiles along their propagation direction and can exert a negative force that, in contrast to the familiar pushing force associated with radiation pressure, pulls the scatterer toward the light source. It was experimentally observed that under certain circumstances, the pulling force can be significantly enhanced6 if a non-spherical scatterer, for example, a linear chain of optically bound objects10, 11, 12, is optically transported. Here we demonstrate that motion of two optically bound objects in a tractor beam strongly depends on theirs mutual distance and spatial orientation. Such configuration-dependent optical forces add extra flexibility to our ability to control matter with light.

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