Star Trek's tractor beam possible?

[Warpy]

Building a tractor beam in the lab may sound a little far-fetched, but physicists at the Australian National University have announced that they've built a device capable of transporting small glass particles — one hundred times the size of a bacterium — one and a half meters across a laboratory desk without touching them (pictured top right). This is a huge advance considering existing "optical tweezers" can only push particles the size of a bacterium few millimeters in liquid.
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Instead, they've built a "hollow laser" that can trap small objects inside and manipulate them.

This 21st technology creates a very thin tube of laser light with a dark core. When the glass particles are placed inside the cool core, they are kept there by the laser-heated air. Should the particles drift in any direction, they are pushed back to the center by the hot cushioning air molecules.

A little more at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39098496/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Posted because the possibilities for manipulating laser beams beyond the tight, narrow beam we now take for granted are mind boggling.

[NoNothing]

1. One minor technicality

There's no air in space, so this technique would not work.

[T Wolf]

2. So, no one could hear you scream when it doesn't work. nt

[Warpy]

3. However, lasers do work

and the implication for shaping them and using them to do things besides measure the distance between the earth and moon is pretty astonishing.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

5. Lasers do alot besides "measuring".

Manufacturing, printing, medicine/surgury, directed energy weapons, targeting systems, holography, computing/data storge, security... in the last two decades lasers have literally exploded in usefullness and application. It's probably one of the hottest integration technologies right now.

Personally, I can't wait for my very own M41A Pulse Rifle so I can defend myself against acid-blodded aliens.

[NoNothing]

7. "lasers have literally exploded"

Ow, my remaining eye!

[Peace Patriot]

4. Well, we weren't sure of an astronaut's ability to pee in space before it was actually tried.

The human body seems to function pretty normally without gravity (though bone loss is still a long term problem, and probably artificial gravity--or some other compensation)--will be needed for long term space trips).

What I mean is, don't debunk a creative thought (--that this experiment might be a preliminary to Star Trek's tractor beam) just because a current experiment doesn't point there directly. Perhaps this will lead to some other way of "tractoring" objects that will be possible without air? My first thought was using concentrated lasers to "husband" air molecules around the object, then heat those molecules. Having demonstrated one method of "tractoring" on earth, others become thinkable, further experiment becomes attractive, then doable, then gets funded, etc.

Granted, this headline is a bit of a stretch. But is it so fanciful--given that one discovery leads to others--and is it so very out of line, as to popular science reporting, especially with the need to explain scientific discoveries in terms that most people can easily grasp? I'm glad that you pointed out the "minor" technicality. I am very much in the category of "most people" when it comes to science, and I don't think that I would have caught this, if you hadn't said it. It was obvious to you that this particular technique wouldn't work in space, but is it so obvious that it's a dead end with regard to Star Trek's "tractor beam"?

[NoNothing]

6. I wasn't trying to argue that it's a dead end

Just that this is about as far from being a "Star Trek" tractor beam as a 747 is from being the Enterprise D.

[Peace Patriot]

9. Yeah, but a 747 can lift a heavy weight off the ground, certain rockets can lift heavy weights

out of the atmosphere into space, and human beings can live in space for a lot longer than a few seconds, once we understand what they need to do so and engineer those requirements. And then we did it. We took the FANTASY of travel in outer space and made it real--with exceptional, cooperative engineering in an era during which computers were the size of milk trucks.

Do these things not suggest the "Enterprise"--which Gene Roddenberry thought up BEFORE the first flight into space but during the period of development of large commercial airliners and rocket experiments, when the thought of space fight for human beings had begun to occur to others--both creative writers and scientists? I think that commercial airliners, rockets and understanding that space is a vacuum DO suggest the Enterprise. That is why the show was such a success--it takes the progress of human invention thus far and extrapolates, realistically, how these developments might one day mature, and how continued experimentation and discovery might make certain things possible that seem impossible now.

You can say that this experiment is "as far from being a 'Star Trek' tractor beam as a 747 is from being the Enterprise D," or you can say that this experiment is JUST LIKE the adventurous scientific dreaming, guessing, experimentation and engineering that produced human flight within earth's atmosphere--in balloons and small planes--and led rather quickly beyond 747s to the first human trips into outer space.

For most of human history, no human beings could fly. For most of human history, "space" was a remote, unreachable realm, that the fanciful dreamed about, and the scientific types studied, for a combination of motives--both because it was interesting in itself, and important to agricultural calendars, navigation and mapping, and for omens from the Gods (connections between the stars and human beings). I live in a rural area where you can still see the stars--and what a glorious sight they are! No wonder people have been trying to figure that spectacular mystery out, probably from the first moment of human sentience.

To go there took an amazing concentration of progress and invention, which we have seen the fruits of, in our lifetimes. To go FURTHER into that realm will take more progress and invention, for which there is plenty of precedent over the past, oh, four hundred years, as to modes of travel and our understanding of the universe, and precedent, also, in all of human development, as to general cleverness at overcoming physical obstacles and our own limitations. Why take the darker view (unless you want to discuss politics and sociology)? We ARE capable of accelerated understanding of the universe and extraordinary mastery over physical obstacles and human limitations.

Why say that the Enterprise is very unlike a 747, instead of saying that a 747 is very like the Wright Brothers' airplane was to intercontinental jet air travel--a preliminary step off the ground, then around the globe, then...?

It seems a natural progression to me--and one with the history of the last half millennium on its side (if not all of human history)--that a successful "tractor beam" experiment on Earth will lead to a successful "tractor beam" in space, and that successful experiments in air travel within our atmosphere, then to the Moon and in sustaining human life for long periods of time in space, and other speculations, experiments and discoveries, will one day result in the "Enterprise D." We dreamt of it. We fooled around for a while with wars and other wastes of human potential. Then we did it.

Maybe it will be the Japanese or the Chinese or the Europeans or the Bolivians (they have lithium and we don't!) or the Venezuelans (they are pouring money into education). Or all of us together. Or maybe some thought that some third grader in South Africa will have in a couple of years, will blast us out of our current assumptions, like Einstein did, and propel us forward in understanding what's really happening "out there" and deep beneath the level of current particle physics--and will make something far beyond the "Enterprise D" possible.

Dreaming and then experimenting are almost a definition of human nature. Fucking up and regressing, and refusing to think creatively, also have precedents--but I would put high odds on the 747 leading to the "Enterprise D" and beyond, despite this dismal trough in U.S. history which makes optimism difficult. We gave a great gift to the world when we went to the Moon. Maybe that will be judged to be our main accomplishment, five hundred years from now when human beings are zipping round the galaxy in their Enterprise Z's.

[NoNothing]

10. I agree with almost everything you said

I am just tired of science reporting that is so dumbed down it assumes we can't appreciate the technology for what it is, but instead pumps things up by implying Star Trek is just around the corner. It insults my intelligence, and frankly, I think it insults the scientists and engineers. Because it sort of implies that if this technology *doesn't* lead to a Star-Trek tractor beam, it is somehow a failure, or a "dead end." It reminds me of people who lament the stagnation of technology because we don't have flying cars yet.

[Peace Patriot]

11. Okay, I didn't mean to be so strident. I do understand the need to be less sensationalist

--to treat science as imminently valuable and interesting, without hype. Same with other news and information, as a matter of fact. But I felt that the article (see below) justifies the title, in this particular instance.

I also think that Star Trek helped stimulate interest in science--most especially the first series (Kirk et al), because of the timing of that show--very influential on my generation--more than its scientific plausibility, the second series (New Generation), very meticulous about scientific plausibility, and the new movies with the old crew. The later Star Trek shows--especially the one about Atlantis--deteriorated, as to any interest in plausible space travel and science, but the main canon has done much to inspire and enlighten young and old on this matter, along with some whopping good stories and characters.

With Next Generation--the best of the canon, in my opinion--it is as much the ATTITUDE toward science as its plausibility that is beneficial. The ship itself is on a scientific expedition, has a science lab, values science and rational thinking, often has scientists as major characters, requires scientific expertise of its officers and so on. Also, its exploration of what it means to be human, through the character Commander Data, is quite a marvelous thing to behold in a TV show. It had an antecedent in Spock (in the initial series) but goes much, much further. Next Generation takes a quantum leap over the initial action/adventure mode of the first series, into taking space travel and the whole human enterprise seriously, from every angle. I think that it inspired young people of the '80s--who didn't have much inspiration around them in society at that time (the truly dismal Reagan years) to aspire to be part of such a community of explorers, scientists and humanists. It was the favorite show of a whole generation of computer techs, just as that particular scientific revolution was beginning. Perhaps it is the reason that Google chose "Do no evil" as its corporate motto. The ethics of science was a major theme of Next Generation. I think it challenged young people to find out if a "tractor beam" or artificial intelligence or artificial gravity or warp drive or terraforming a planet or touchscreen computing were possible and to think creatively about possibilities, both scientific and social (and to some degree political--the perils of war, the ways to avoid war, the difficulties of diplomacy, how to handle truly alien races with whom you share almost no common values, issues of law and ethics).

I don't think of Star Trek as silly or outlandish. And so I don't think of referencing it in a scientific headline, if it is relevant, as sensationalist, but rather as an effort to access that very big audience that learned respect for science, and became interested in science, through Star Trek.

[Peace Patriot]

8. The article discusses the very point that you raise--need for an atmosphere in this experiment.

I just read the article to the end. The article itself addresses this problem--an explanation that justifies the headline as appropriate, and also supports my criticism of your comment (that you simply debunked the headline about Star Trek without seeing that this discovery could lead to a "tractor beam" in space).

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"But you may notice a problem with this technique if you wanted to install the laser-tractor beam on the USS Enterprise. This system needs to be operated in an atmosphere, not in a vacuum — the glass particles are kept in place by laser-heated air molecules after all.

"Still, there are a huge variety of applications this burgeoning tractor beam has on Earth. For one, this could be used to transport dangerous microorganisms 'hands free' in biomedical facilities; a step-up from the optical tweezers already in use. It could also be used in the construction of sensitive microscopic machines.

"So, will Star Trek's tractor beam ever be possible? Unless gravitons are discovered, it would seem this technology is unlikely at best.

"However, that's been said about another Star Trek favorite: the warp drive. Assuming the existence of dark energy, tiny extra-dimensions and a method to generate a shedload of energy, advanced propulsion expert Richard Obousy thinks zipping around the cosmos at warp speed (LINK) could have potential (LINK).

QUOTE OF OBOUSY: "'It's apparent to me that a lot of people seem to want to prove why a technology is not possible, rather than think of ingenious ways to make something possible. It's my conviction that when someone says something is 'impossible,' what they really mean is 'our current level of science cannot explain this, and I don’t have the motivation to explore beyond its boundaries'.' — Richard Obousy"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39098496/ns/technology_and_science-science