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, ...

Researchers are developing a real-life tractor beam, with the goal of pulling defunct satellites out of geostationary orbit to alleviate the space junk problem.

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.

Schaub added that tractor beams could be a significantly cheaper cleanup tool, too, as a craft equipped with one could move up to "dozens of objects during its lifetime." "That brings your cost ...

But now, scientists at MIT have successfully created a tractor beam device that fits in the palm of your hand and can manipulate objects much further than previous chip-based forebears.