The researchers are drawing on one of the oldest tropes in science fiction: tractor beams like the ones the Starship Enterprise uses to safely move asteroids out of the way. Imagine this: In the ...

Don’t blame us for the click-baity titles in the source articles about this handheld “acoustic tractor beam”. You can see why the popular press tarted this one up a bit, even at the risk of ...

Microscope “tractor beams,” known to scientists as optical tweezers, come in either bulky, expensive setups or smaller, ...

And as opposite charged attract, the tractor beam can begin its towing work. The team estimates that it could pull a several-ton satellite around 200 miles over two to three months—not fast, but ...

The tractor beams don't have to be on the same surface as the cells to work effectively, either. The integrated optical phased array (IOPA), as it's called, can trap cells from afar.

The result is something very akin to the tractor beam seen in science fiction media like Star Wars. Further, the scientists say they may have found a way to make it more portable.

The quest for a real life tractor beam continues, with a 2-micrometer-thick silicon light bender. The silicon metasurface changes a solid beam into a triple spiral one that can pick up particles ...