New tractor beam has potential to tame lightning
Lightning never strikes twice, so the saying goes, but new technology may allow us to control where it hits the ground, reducing the risk of catastrophic bushfires.
Lightning never strikes twice, so the saying goes, but new technology may allow us to control where it hits the ground, reducing the risk of catastrophic bushfires.
General Physics
Nov 11, 2020
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University of Adelaide researchers have delved into the realm of Star Trek and created a powerful tractor beam – or light-driven energy trap – for atoms.
Quantum Physics
Oct 30, 2018
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(Phys.org) —A team of researchers working in Australia has built a tractor beam that bests the distance of other efforts a hundred fold—and it can both push and pull objects. In their paper published in the journal Nature ...
The first ever landing of a man-made probe onto a comet has been named Physics World Breakthrough of the Year for 2014.
General Physics
Dec 12, 2014
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A long-time staple of science fiction is the tractor beam, a technology in which light is used to move massive objects – recall the tractor beam in the movie Star Wars that captured the Millennium Falcon and pulled it into ...
Quantum Physics
Aug 15, 2012
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Modern construction is a precision endeavor. Builders must use components manufactured to meet specific standards—such as beams of a desired composition or rivets of a specific size. The building industry relies on manufacturers ...
Optics & Photonics
Nov 4, 2019
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Until recently, if scientists wanted to study blood cells, algae, or bacteria under the microscope, they had to mount these cells on a substrate such as a glass slide. Physicists at Bielefeld and Frankfurt Universities have ...
Optics & Photonics
Dec 13, 2016
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(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 ...
Researchers at Purdue University have trapped alkali atoms (cesium) on an integrated photonic circuit, which behaves like a transistor for photons (the smallest energy unit of light) similar to electronic transistors. These ...
Optics & Photonics
Jul 29, 2024
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'Tractor beams' of light that pull objects towards them are no longer science fiction. Haifeng Wang at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute and co-workers have now demonstrated how a tractor beam can in fact be realized on a ...
General Physics
May 24, 2012
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