Archive for the ‘tractor beam’ category
Jan 27, 2023
Scientists Make Star Trek Technology Real With A Working Tractor Beam
Posted by Paul Battista 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 Paul Battista 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 Paul Battista 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 laser light to create an optical tractor beam that could pull objects.
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Jun 9, 2022
Real-Life ‘Star Trek’ Tractor Beams Will Change How We Practice Medicine
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: biotech/medical, tractor beam
Circa 2015
Star Trek’s ideal view of medicine is closer than we think.
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Feb 15, 2022
New Advanced Light Tractor Beam Moving Atoms
Posted by Shubham Ghosh Roy 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 Gemechu Taye 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.
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Jul 14, 2021
Acoustic Tractor Beam Can Grab Objects From Behind Obstacles
Posted by Omuterema Akhahenda 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.
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Jun 23, 2021
Enhancement of the ‘tractor-beam’ pulling force on an optically bound structure
Posted by Quinn Sena 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.
Sep 16, 2020
Light-based ‘tractor beam’ assembles materials at the nanoscale
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: biological, computing, nanotechnology, quantum physics, tractor beam
Modern construction is a precision endeavor. Builders must use components manufactured to meet specific standards — such as beams of a desired composition or rivets of a specific size. The building industry relies on manufacturers to create these components reliably and reproducibly in order to construct secure bridges and sound skyscrapers.
Now imagine construction at a smaller scale — less than 1/100th the thickness of a piece of paper. This is the nanoscale. It is the scale at which scientists are working to develop potentially groundbreaking technologies in fields like quantum computing. It is also a scale where traditional fabrication methods simply will not work. Our standard tools, even miniaturized, are too bulky and too corrosive to reproducibly manufacture components at the nanoscale.
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a method that could make reproducible manufacturing at the nanoscale possible. The team adapted a light-based technology employed widely in biology — known as optical traps or optical tweezers — to operate in a water-free liquid environment of carbon-rich organic solvents, thereby enabling new potential applications.