Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2015

Spaceships in movies and TV shows routinely use tractor beams to tow other vessels or keep them in place. Physicists have been hard at work trying take this technology from science fiction to reality. Significant process has recently been made by a team who have developed a laser tractor beam able to attract and repel particles about 100 times further than has been previously achieved. The lead author of the paper, published in Nature Photonics, is Vladlen Shvedov at Australian National University in Canberra.

Other recent tractor beams have used acoustics or water, but this one uses a single laser beam to control tiny particles about 0.2 millimeters in diameter. The tractor beam was able to manipulate the particles from a distance of 20 centimeters, shattering previous records. Despite this incredible distance, the researchers claim it is still on the short end of what is possible for this tractor beam technique.

Continue reading “Physicists Develop Reversible Laser Tractor Beam Functional Over Long Distances” »

The world’s most powerful tractor beam just lifted a 2 centimeter ball, but could it make levitating humans a reality?

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Continue reading “Scientists Just Used a Tractor Beam to Levitate the Largest Object Yet” »

This tractor beam breakthrough means humans are one step closer to levitation. (via Seeker)

In a sci-fi feeling first, engineers at the University of Bristol used the world’s most powerful acoustic tractor beam to demonstrate that it’s possible to stably contain objects larger than the wavelength of sound.

In other words, they were able to levitate objects notably larger than what’s ever been possible before; a feat that theoretically opens up the potential of one day levitating humans.

Acoustic tractor beams use sound, or more specifically soundwaves, to hold particles in mid-air. While magnetic levitation also exists, acoustic levitation tends to work better for handling liquids and solids.

Continue reading “This Breakthrough in Tractor Beam Tech Could Pave The Way to Levitating Humans” »

Acoustic researchers had been frustrated by the size limit for years, so it’s satisfying to find a way to overcome it.”

Acoustic tractor beams use the power of sound to hold particles in mid-air, and unlike magnetic levitation, they can grab most solids or liquids. For the first time University of Bristol engineers have shown it is possible to stably trap objects larger than the wavelength of sound in an acoustic tractor beam. This discovery opens the door to the manipulation of drug capsules or micro-surgical implements within the body. Container-less transportation of delicate larger samples is now also a possibility and could lead to levitating humans.

Researchers previously thought that acoustic tractor beams were fundamentally limited to levitating small objects as all the previous attempts to trap particles larger than the wavelength had been unstable, with objects spinning uncontrollably. This is because rotating sound field transfers some of its spinning motion to the objects causing them to orbit faster and faster until they are ejected.

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(Phys.org)—Researchers have used the pressure of light—also called optical forces or sometimes “tractor beams”—to create a new type of rewritable, dynamic 3D holographic material. Unlike other 3D holographic materials, the new material can be rapidly written and erased many times, and can also store information without using any external energy. The new material has potential applications in 3D holographic displays, large-scale volumetric data storage devices, biosensors, tunable lasers, optical lenses, and metamaterials.

The research was conducted by a multidisciplinary team led by Yunuen Montelongo at Imperial College London and Ali K. Yetisen at Harvard University and MIT. In recent papers published in Nature Communications and Applied Physics Letters, the researchers demonstrated the reversible optical manipulation of nanostructured materials, which they used to fabricate active 3D holograms, lenses, and memory devices.

The key to creating the 3D holographic material with these advantages was to use optical forces to reversibly modify the material’s properties. The optical forces are produced by the interference of two or more laser beams, which creates an optical pressure capable of moving nanoscale structures. So far, optical forces have mainly been used for just one application: optical tweezers, which can hold and move tiny objects and are mostly used in biological applications.

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Physicists have manipulated 50 individual atoms at once in a dramatic upscaling of a technique vital to quantum computing. Cathal O’Connell explains.

Carbon nanotubes in a dish assemble themselves into a nanowire in seconds under the influence of a custom-built Tesla coil created by scientists at Rice University.

But the scientists don’t limit their aspirations for the phenomenon they call Teslaphoresis to simple nanowires.

Continue reading “Nanotubes assemble! Rice introduces Teslaphoresis” »