News tagged with optical tweezers

Scientists isolate, hold, photograph individual Rubidium 85 atom

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a major physics breakthrough, University of Otago scientists have developed a technique to consistently isolate and capture a fast-moving neutral atom - and have also seen and photographed ...

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 01, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (44) | comments 26 | with audio podcast

Tractor beams come to life

Tractor beams, energy rays that can move objects, are a science fiction mainstay. But now they are becoming a reality -- at least for moving very tiny objects.

Physics / General Physics

created Sep 08, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (47) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

Physicists prove Einstein wrong with observation of instantaneous velocity in Brownian particles

A century after Albert Einstein said we would never be able to observe the instantaneous velocity of tiny particles as they randomly shake and shimmy, so called Brownian motion, physicist Mark Raizen and his ...

Physics / General Physics

created May 20, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (44) | comments 32 | with audio podcast

Small optical force can budge nanoscale objects

(PhysOrg.com) -- Engineering researchers have used a very tiny beam of light with as little as 1 milliwatt of power to move a silicon structure up to 12 nanometers.

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Nov 17, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (16) | comments 0

Previously unaccounted mechanism proposed for cell phone radiation damage

(PhysOrg.com) -- The long running debate on whether cell phones are capable of damaging human tissue and causing health problems received new fuel from a paper published at arXiv by theoretical biologist Bill Bruno from Los Alamos National Laborato ...

Physics / General Physics

created Apr 29, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (14) | comments 24 | with audio podcast report

Micro-ear lets scientists eavesdrop on the micro-world

(PhysOrg.com) -- Acting as a microscope for sound, a new device called a micro-ear could make objects on the micro-scale audible. The device could enable scientists to listen to the sounds that cells and bacteria ...

Technology / Engineering

created Feb 26, 2010 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (14) | comments 1 | with audio podcast report

A pinch of light: Laser 'tweezers' for medicine, communications and harvesting energy

Star Trek fans will remember "tractor beams," lasers that allowed the Starship Enterprise to trap and move objects. Tel Aviv University is now turning this science fiction into science fact -- on a nano scale.

Physics / General Physics

created Jul 06, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (11) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Nanotechnology gets a new light touch

(PhysOrg.com) -- Building the super-fast computers of the future has just become much easier thanks to an advance by Australian researchers that lets them grab hold of tiny electronics components and probe ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Oct 02, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (9) | comments 0

The Power of Light: Moving Macroscopic Amounts of Matter

(PhysOrg.com) -- Since 1970, scientists have been working with “optical tweezers” - lasers that move microscopic amounts of matter using forces originating from the light matter interaction. Now, for the first ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jan 29, 2009 | popularity 3.3 / 5 (12) | comments 17 feature

Acoustic tweezers can position tiny objects

(PhysOrg.com) -- Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Aug 28, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 1

Dynamic systems in living cells break the rules

There is considerable interest in understanding transport and information pathways in living cells. It is crucial for both the transport of, for example, medicine into cells, the regulation of cell life processes ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jan 25, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 9

Manipulating single molecules to unravel secrets of protein folding

Physicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) are opening a new window into the life of biological cells, using a technique that lets them grab the ends of a single protein molecule and pull, making ...

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 27, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (6) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Gene transcribing machine takes halting, backsliding trip along the DNA

(PhysOrg.com) -- The body's nanomachines that read our genes don't run as smoothly as previously thought, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Jul 30, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 1

Tailoring the optical dipole force for use on molecules

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Scientists have been working with dipole fields for quite some time," Peter Barker tells PhysOrg.com. "However, most of the work is focused on very small particles, like atoms, or on larger particles, such a ...

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 29, 2009 | popularity 3.5 / 5 (6) | comments 1 feature

Intracellular express -- why transport protein molecules have brakes

Every single one of our cells contains so-called motor proteins that transport important substances from one location to another. However, very little is known about how exactly these transport processes occur. ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created May 21, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0 | with audio podcast