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British Engineers Create Sonic Tractor Beam (bbc.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: According to the BBC, engineers in Bristol, England have created a system for remote manipulation of physical objects using sound holograms. The video shows pea-sized objects being dragged around and stacked up in mid-air with no visible means of support. "In essence, an object sitting in a 'quiet' region of space can be held there if it is surrounded by very high-intensity sound waves. As the pattern of that boundary shifts, the object can be moved around." If the Empire is making a tractor beam, now they only need a Death Star to go with it.
When will they get this in screwdriver form?
A tractor beam, that relies on waves propagating through matter, that will work in the nearly matterless void that is space, right?
"If the Empire is making a tractor beam, now they only need a Death Star to go with it."
Not even wrong.
So does it only work on blue hedgehogs then?
IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE
It's a pressor beam. It doesn't attract anything.
In essence, an object sitting in a 'quiet' region of space can be held there if it is surrounded by very high-intensity sound waves.
In Space, no one can hear you tractor beam.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Electricity instead of bombs? (Think Ira\b\b\b NIF)
but not as we know it.
I don't see any video in either of the two articles linked (but the second has a lot of nice diagrams)...
At Argonne National Laboratory years ago?
"If the Empire is making a tractor beam, now they only need a Death Star to go with it."
Well, that and an atmosphere.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I might start with a sound positioning beam until the subject is worn out a little, then transfer to using a light positioning beam to move the subject until the subject is worn out a little bit more than before, then transfer to using a magnetic field to move the subject until the subject is even more worn out, and so on,.. until death.
Montgomery "Scotty" Scott invent tractor beam, hmmmm....
The reference should obviously had been either Dr. Who or Star Trek. Fuck Star Wars, it's the Wizard of Oz in space.
Tachyon
Now we'll just have to build a big pump to inflate the vacuum of space and then this will work just fine in microgravity.
In Soviet Russia, you drive tractor!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Star Wars takes place in a galaxy far away and long ago, so we have no idea of scale. Except...
We know they can travel between planets in a relatively short time. Given that faster than light travel is impossible, we can calculate the upper limit to their "galaxy" size by the speed at which they can traverse it. We also know that sound travels in their "space" so it is probably filled with air. What we take for "gravity" is probably some other force, such as electrostatic attraction, surface tension or soic tractor beams. By my calculations the "humans" are microbe sized and the death star was the size of a pea.
The word tractor was taken from Latin, being the agent noun of trahere "to pull".
So far, they all push.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
LOL, this was done two years ago in Japan.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odJxJRAxdFU
Headline should read "British scientists discovers ultrasonic two years late.
NB. The japanese has much better 3d control than the UK example.
You really had my hopes up with the title on this one. Pushing the pea into the air against the force of gravity with sound waves. This is nothing new. They've been able to do things like this for years. In science fiction, tractor beams almost always pull things towards themselves (which is a much more impressive feat). Now had they been able to focus the sound waves from above to levitate the pea without reflecting them, then I would've been much more impressed.
Can it be developed so that it can reduce the speed of incoming projectiles? Like some kind of point defence.....speaker system.....
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
Now we don't need ants to sort tiny screws in space!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"If the Empire is making a (sonic) tractor beam, now they only need a Death Star to go with it."
Wouldnâ(TM)t work in space now would it...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
or use a "tractor" beam that requires sound to manipulate objects.
The crucial element here is the use of waves (in this case sound).
The basic physics likely points to the possibility of using modulated light waves (or x-ray, gamma ray waves). Those propagate quite well in a vacuum. The question will be how much energy is needed to achieve the necessary wave density to manipulate objects.
This is a pretty cool, imho.
The attraction relies on gravity's pull.
I don't see where the speakers are applying an additional "pull" force.
While neat the title needs adjustment.
There's an ongoing trend with technologies that are somewhat similar to sci-fi tropes but do not do what those devices do that is worrying these days, recent examples: 1. Hoverboards that require metal surfaces instead of floating over anything (you know, hover?) 2. Tractor beams that are actually high intensity wave generators, need a medium to travel through and do not have anywhere near the level of power and flexibility an actual tractor beam has (it's not even a beam!) This is not to diminish the achievement of the existing technologies but please stop calling them by the wrong names.
I won't consider anything a candidate for being called a "tractor beam" (emphasis on beam here) until the distance it works at is at *least* twice the size of the emitter.
Where is my radio tractor beam? I need to know.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If the Empire is making a tractor beam, now they only need a Death Star to go with it.
Darned kids. In my day, sound didn't travel through space