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Tractor Beams Come To Life

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the da-da-da-dadada-dadada dept.

Jamie is helping bring our childhood fantasies/nightmares to life with a link that says "Andrei Rhode, a researcher involved with the project, said that existing optical tweezers are able to move particles the size of a bacterium a few millimeters in a liquid. Their new technique can move objects one hundred times that size over a distance of a meter or more."

8 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Strangely drawn to this story... by jrmcc · · Score: 5, Funny

    can't quite figure out why?

    1. Re:Strangely drawn to this story... by Dishevel · · Score: 3, Funny

      I did not realize that every aspect of my life needs to be devoted toward helping some other person out.

      Wow!
      This means a major change for me!
      The toilet paper I choose seems to help nothing.
      93.7% of my /. posts help no one.
      I watched the news last night. No one helped there.
      I failed to watch some lecture. No helping there.
      This post.

      You are so right. Have no more time for anything now that I have seen the light.

      Oh wait.
      I meant to say.
      Fuck off.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  2. Yeah, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    the tractor beam wont be installed until Tuesday.

  3. Hope you can wait by T+Murphy · · Score: 5, Funny
    FTA:

    Physicists have been able to manipulate tiny particles over miniscule distances by using lasers for years.

    I hope the new tractor beams don't take as long to operate. I don't have that kind of time.

    --
    My webcomic
  4. Re:Just what this country needs... by Coder4Life · · Score: 0, Funny

    As if our country isn't obese enough already. Now we'll eventually have people getting beer and Doritos without even getting their fat asses off the couch.

    Who needs a tractor beam when you have a wife to do this?

    --
    Once upon a time in a mythical land called Soviet Russia, a hot bowl of grits had Natalie Portman.
  5. Just reverse it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just reverse it -- use dark instead of light -- and it will pull.

  6. Re:Aren't tractor beams all about pulling? by JustOK · · Score: 2, Funny

    I made one once that would pull things. Everyone just said it sucked. Then that guy made a Dyson Vacuum Sphere and things got strange.

    --
    rewriting history since 2109
  7. Re:Agriculture by SEWilco · · Score: 3, Funny

    Han Solo: "We're caught in a tweezer beam, it's pulling us in!" No, it just doesn't work. Just doesn't set up the scene correctly at all.

    Sure it does. A maid with a vacuum cleaner large enough to destroy a planet would also have a tweezer beam large enough for one little ship.