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Tractor Beams Are Getting Closer (Sort of)
xt writes "A recently submitted paper in arXiv claims that by using Bessel beams it is theoretically possible to pull particles towards the light source, opening up new avenues for optical micromanipulation (the direction of the force is size dependent, so it could be used for particle sorting). There is also a simpler article translated in English (original article in Greek)."
There's something strangely attractive about this idea...
Its all Greek to me.
Its all Greek to me.
We have (quantum) teleporters and (quantum) tractor beams now? What's next, (quantum) warp drives?
Will support for this be embedded in the next Linux Kernel release?
If I read the (surprisingly good) google translation correctly, the traction results from a photon emmision into the opposite direction of the beam. If the beam is continously applied, wouldn't the beam itself propel the particles more than it 'pulls' them? would this be solved by a stroboscopic laser?
Democracy: Crowdsourcing a country near you
There should be some formula. For every 1,000,000 articles produced about something that's theoretically possible, 1 results in an actual practical application.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
True. But it makes for good stories to fill-up Asimov's Science-based fiction. "Well it's theoretically possible to build a tractor beam" - random author
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I thought items get closer to them. Or is this a relativity thing?
Science fiction technologies can be divided into two classes. Those which are merely incredibly difficult, and those to which the laws of physics have raised a comic middle finger to our dreams.
The former include interstellar travel, nano-assemblers, immortality and brain uploading. The latter perpetual motion, time travel, antigravity and anything faster than light. Anything in the first category you can hope will, one day, be achiveable... even though it may take centuries of advancement.
I'm not sure where tractor beams fall.
Actually, this could be pretty significant if it takes some clever machine rather than a host of gigantic centrifuges to do the job.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
I want a repulsor beam. Fuck antigravity I only want to repel the ground.
I would say faster than light travel straddles the categories. Time travel may as well. Theoretical Physicist Michio Kaku has written about possibilities for both. While I'm not holding out hope to ever see either of these, if we could somehow figure out how to create wormholes, for example, (which I would put in the 'incredibly difficult' category until it's proven otherwise) those could potentially be used for both (though I'll admit, I'm rather skeptical of the claims that they could be used for time travel.)
Of course, it's also debatable if wormholes (if they even exist) could actually be considered faster than light travel, which is another reason why I would say it straddles the two categories. Strictly speaking I suppose you aren't violating that law, you're just finding a way around it.
And yes, I realize that creating a wormhole would involving bending space itself...which is no small feat. But it also seems like it may be no more difficult than something like moving planets around - which is certainly not impossible. Just insane. But that's what people would have said about geo-engineering not too long ago...
Faster than light and time travel are both admitted as possibilities by the laws of physics as we know them. Depending on what you mean by antigravity, it probably is too.
I think it may be possible for information to travel faster than light. Remember that during the inflationary period following the big bang, the universe expanded at a rate several magnitudes greater than the speed of light. No, I don't think it is possible for people to travel faster than light and still maintain their structural integrity. And I agree, anything that violates the law of causality bothers the heck out of me.
Tractor beams... well, until we fully understand how gravity fits into unified field theory, we can still hold out hope that they may be possible. And if you can do attraction, it stands to reason you should also be able to do repulsion... woo-hoo, antigravity!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Anything that won't happen in my lifetime is pointless. Though I'd like to thank those that came before me who didn't think that way. ;^)
Perpetual motion is guaranteed by Newton's Laws. Time travel is logically impossible, since time is a force, not a dimension. Antigravity is possible, there are several theoretical descriptions of how to do so.
What descriptions would those be? And only true antigravity counts - spinning something or accelerating will be considered cheating.
All we need to do is add atomic power, and bingo, nuclear bessels!
Michael Coyne
http://turthalion.blogspot.com
They always get closer until you turn them off.
Right now we primarily use stuff like centrifugal particle size detectors (Shimadzu for example) and the Elzone (Electrical Sensing Zone) type systems to do particle sizing for micron size diamond and other small particulates. If this process can be adapted, we have a much more precise way of setting up different sizes of particles distributions because we can pull the different size particles individually into different dispersions. The possibilities for customization of different types of particle distributions could be very, very useful in abrasives engineering!
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Ah, well, now that that's settled, we can get back to deciding who's hotter; Princess Leia or Queen Natalie Portman.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Hey! SuciRaven said it couldn't be done and he's posting. On. The Internets!
I drank what? -- Socrates
I'm pretty sure there was a story just like this less than a month ago.
But... the future refused to change.
The former include interstellar travel, nano-assemblers, immortality and brain uploading. The latter perpetual motion, time travel, antigravity and anything faster than light. Anything in the first category you can hope will, one day, be achiveable... even though it may take centuries of advancement.
Let's hope either immortality or at least brain uploading is one of the first ones then.
somewhere in a lab someone moved a particle or two and TFS suggests we can move spaceships. I'm guessing this does not scale. If you get light powerful enough to move a ship, it would probably vaporize the ship or something.
How exciting for our farming industry. Just think of the benefits!
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
So now we know how souls are pulled towards the light in near death experiences: Bessel beams.
Who said you never learn anything new on Slashdot?
I am anarch of all I survey.
Strictly speaking I suppose you aren't violating that law, you're just finding a way around it.
Interesting -- I was just reading that other article about the patent trolls getting sued by the Google and Microsoft team, and this sentence seemed to fit both articles. :)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Abrasive engineering: "Yeah well fuck you too, just hand me that spanner!"
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Tractor Beam Technology Pulling Closer
Paddle faster, I hear banjos
why no one has thought of combing this with this to move particles over distance is beyond me.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
This is like climbing a tree, and claiming you've made progress in getting to the moon.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I think it's incredibly optimistic to think that true physical immortality will ever be possible (copying your conscious thoughts onto the internet doesn't count, IMHO).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If Time is a force does that mean that I can count on Bullshit being a dimension?