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Another piece of Star Trek technology becomes a reality

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 26 Oct 2014, 12:25am

Another piece of Star Trek technology becomes a reality

 The Enterprise-D towing a broken down shuttle back to Earth shipyards using a tractor beam

It's a sci-fi trope. The hero's outgunned and needs to escape from his dominating opponent. He pulls out a last ditch escape move and SUCCEEDS! The ship rapidly speeds away. Suddenly, alarms sound, the ship shudders and somebody (usually the co-pilot) shouts that the enemy's got them in a tractor beam. From Star Wars to Star Trek to countless other sci-fi movies, the tractor beam is a stalwart.

Now physicists from the Australian National University, have created the real thing. While technically tractor beams have been invented already, this is the first optical long distance tractor beam. Brace yourself though, it's not as awesome at it sounds... yet. Currently, they've only created a laser that can move particles about 20cm. That might not sound like much, but it's a major leap forward from earlier attempts (roughly about 100 times more).

There's still a long way and much more research to be done before we might see any real practical application for the tech, but the creators envision it being used one day to control atmospheric pollution. That's all fine and dandy, but I suggest they focus on something more important to mankind; hoverboards.

Source: Australian National University

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