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The good news is they’ve made a better kind of tractor beam. The bad news is it’s rubbish, only managing to line up minuscule polystyrene balls suspended in water. That wouldn’t even make the cut as a Voyager episode.
Scientists from Scotland’s University of St Andrews and the Czech Republic’s Institute of Scientific Instruments came up with this latest take on the sci-fi innovation, which uses a light beam to line up particles. The team has managed to reverse the (Kepler) push effect that usually sees the light photons push microscopic particles away from the beam, with very specific parameters able to control what gets pushed away from or pulled toward the beam.
Sadly, this won’t lead to any exciting space rescues. The amount of energy used would cause “huge problems” if scaled up to anything other than molecular proportions, with the team hoping it might instead find a use in the medical field for, say, separating cells in blood sample. [University of St Andrews via Daily Mail]
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Personally i’m quite excited by this news, certainly not dissapointed. Moving stuff with light is just cool, no matter what the scale.
t’s a start and don’t diss “Voyager”
Needs more temporal anomalies for that.
Captain Braxton should have had his own series
I do not see how this is a disappointment. What they have been able to do it very, very awesome. Plus, it is progress is it not?
I agree with Julian and Aevolve, very excited about this
Seems like over the past year their have been quite a few news stories/technological advances bringing us closer to things like replicators etc. 
Back in the 60′s computers only had minute amounts of memory, now mass produced laptops have more than most could ever imagine using. Given our winter weather, I’d liken it to making a snowman. This is the little ball base, with which a giant, 40ft snowman with fire breath and laser beam eyes can be created. Just a matter of time!
This is perhaps the strangest analogy I have ever heard/read.
I have to agree although I agree with what he’s saying.
The first telephone was pretty rubbish to, but look how it ended up.
Do not be disappointed Gary! I know Tomas, and he is a Star Wars fan. This tractor beam will be used primarily for reeling in YT-1300 Freighters.
In fact, I might go downstairs just now and try the thing out on Maltesers…
I know Gary’s headline was meant in jest, but it really doesn’t help shift the “Oh those crazy boffins, wasting time and money on pointless things” image that gets perpetrated by certain sections of the press. The ability for scientists to research and explore concepts without necessarily focusing on the bottom line or an application has got us no end of cool stuff (the apparently very abstract Theory of General Relativity is used to make GPS work, for example).
This is a Sciency/Techy site, we can allow ourselves to be excited by knowledge for the sake of knowledge once in a while!