Tractor Beams Come To Life

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."

Comments

Pfft.

[0100010001010011]

Until the bacterium reroute the main power conduits through the deflector beam to create an inverse tachyon pulse. Then what?

Re:Pfft.

[Abstrackt]

Until the bacterium reroute the main power conduits through the deflector beam to create an inverse tachyon pulse. Then what?

I think you meant deflector array. Otherwise there's no way such a silly thing could happen. :p

Strangely drawn to this story...

[jrmcc]

can't quite figure out why?

Re:Strangely drawn to this story...

[Abstrackt]

If somebody makes a beam that can move something bigger than a bacterium around I'll be impressed whether it works in space or not.

As for your cheerios, perhaps you should label your liquids better.

Re:Strangely drawn to this story...

[Dishevel]

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.

Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

the tractor beam wont be installed until Tuesday.

Aren't tractor beams all about pulling?

[Gotung]

Sure moving objects with light is cool, but this is pushing, not pulling.

This tech will do no good in keeping those pesky rebels from escaping your space station.

Re:Aren't tractor beams all about pulling?

[Idiomatick]

Uhhhh it works as a tractor beam just fine. FTFA:
"The device works by shining a hollow laser beam around tiny glass particles. The air surrounding the particle heats up, while the dark center of the beam stays cool. When the particle starts to drift out of the middle and into the bright laser beam, the force of heated air molecules bouncing around and hitting the particle's surface is enough to nudge it back to the center."

So if you take two or more lasers place them on opposite sides of where you want to pull something. Point the lasers at the object. Then slowly turn the beams towards the middle. Tada. You've pulled your object to you.

In other news, I only use repulsive forces on with hand to pick up things (other forces too minor to consider), yet some how I still manage to pull things towards myself.

Re:Aren't tractor beams all about pulling?

[JustOK]

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.

From the Description...

[Philomage]

They should call this an optical pipette. (Yes, I did RTFA, and no, I'm not turning in my nerd card.)

Hope you can wait

[T Murphy]

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.

Not Really a Tractor Beam...

[Richard.Tao]

From the article "Because this technique needs heated gas to push the particles around, it can't work in the vacuum of outer space like the tractor beams in Star Trek."
Also it needs lasers on both sides of the object and "tiny glass particles" near the object.This technique can in no way mimic the properties of what I consider a tractor bream: a beam of energy that pulls and object toward it. It's just a better way at moving stuff with light, which is still nifty.

Just reverse it

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Agriculture

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Re:Agriculture

[SEWilco]

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.

Re:Agriculture

[ultranova]

They knew the plans for the death star were on that ship and since a high ranking politician was on board they couldn't just destroy it right away.

What high-ranking politician? The only people on the ship at that point were Obi-Wan, Luke, Han, Chewie, R2-D2 and 3-CPO. None of them were politicians.

Besides, if the Empire was willing to blow up an entire planet, I doubt they'd spare a ship either. It simply doesn't make sense. Unless, of course, Han shot first and Lucas simply cut that from the movie.

Too late

[CarpetShark]

Listen, no one's left to care about bacteria. By the time the tractor beam has come to life, even the captain has already abandoned ship.

I mean, seriously... even in the wildest sci-fi show, did you EVER hear of a tractor beam COMING TO LIFE?!

Pressor beam anyhow.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

For some reason I thought of farm implements when I saw "tractor." Didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Sure it does. "Tractor beams" and "tractors" are named that because they pull. (Same root as "traction".)

However the beam in TFA is, in the science fiction vernacular, a "pressor beam", the "tractor beam"'s other-direction counterpart, because it pushes. The hollow cylindrical beam pushes inward, while the beam-down-the-middle pushes along the "tube".