NEW: A working tractor beam made of sound
Credit: Image courtesy of Asier Marzo, Bruce Drinkwater and Sriram Subramanian copyright 2015 A team of researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex in collaboration with Ultrahaptics has built a novel sonic tractor beam that can lift and move objects using sound waves. You may not have considered using sound to create a tractor beam, but researchers did and have developed not one but three sonic technologies that hold and manipulate small objects. Amazing stuff, this, straight out of science fiction. Here's the report with a link to the longer article in the journal Nature Communications. * * * * * Sonic tractor beam moves stuff with sound The concept of tractor beams that can grab and lift objects has been used by science-fiction writers, and programs like Star Trek, but has since come to fascinate scientists and engineers. Researchers have now built a working tractor beam that uses high-amplitude sound waves ...