Miniature Tractor Beam Uses Light to Attract Objects; Star Trek Fans Rejoice

Have you ever wanted to captain the Starship Enterprise? How about use its tractor beam? Star Trek fans may not get to pilot the Enterprise, but they may be able to see at least one of these futuristic technologies come into play. A team of scientists have created a real-life miniature tractor beam in a development which may lead to more efficient medical testing.

The microscopic beam, created by scientists from the University of St. Andrews and the Institute of Scientific Instruments in the Czech Republic, allows a source of light to attract objects. Although light manipulation techniques have existed since the 1970s, this is the first instance of a beam successfully being used to draw objects toward light.

When matter and light usually interact, a solid object is pushed by the light and carried away in a stream of photons. However, there are situations where this force reverses--and scientists have now demonstrated it. They built a beam of light and tested it on polystyrene particles with varying sizes--from 400 nm to 1000 nm. The researchers were able to pull them with their tractor and manipulate the beam to only pull certain particles. In other words, they could choose to pull only the 400 nm partiples, or only the 1000 nm particles.

Although this finding is a long way from the giant tractor beam seen in Star Trek, it has exciting practical applications for medical testing. It could be refined to be used with biological particles, and possibly be used to sort items within a blood sample. It could allow doctors the ability to better diagnose diseases and understand how they work.