Star Trek tractor beams a reality

Although not as iconic as the transporter or photon torpedoes, the tractor beam is one of Star Trek’s most beloved – and useful – devices. Now researchers at the Australian National University have brought us one step closer to the 24th Century with the first steps toward a real tractor beam.

“Optical tweezers” aren’t uncommon, and use beams of light to move particles the size of bacterium a few millimetres with impressive precision. But this new instrument is able move objects 100 times larger, and move them over a meter and a half.

By shining a hollow laser at glass particles, an envelope of heated air develops around the cool particle. The heated gas molecules can then be used to move the object around by applying a similar laser from the other side and varying the intensities to manipulate the particle.

“With the particles and the laser we use, I would guess up to 10 meters in air should not be a problem,” explains researcher Andrei Rhode. “The max distance we had was 1.5 meters, which was limited by the size of the optical table in the lab.”

At the moment this device wouldn’t work in the vacuum of space, given its reliance on heating the gas around a particle, so there’ll be no tractoring fleeing vessels into the cargo bay for a while, but the researchers predicts their device’s usefulness in moving around dangerous material or microbes very soon.