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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.
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. . . .
but not as we know it.
Pretty sure your browser's broken then, the BBC article has a video just above the text "Engineers in Bristol".
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.
No, this is not because of advertising. The bbc tries to make copying the content hard, and uses digital restrictions management. They even supported EME: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/ar...
In Soviet Russia, you drive tractor!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
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.
Nice video. But this is a levitation (objects are pushed) rather than a tractor (objects are pulled) beam.
The first part of the linked bbc.co.uk video is a bit unclear, watch it until the end to see the pulling effect.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Watch the video until the end. The pea is actually being pulled.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
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."
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.
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.
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