Lasers can act as Tractor Beams...

This is awesome!

Although it has been known for so long that light energy can act as a propulsion medium, like, for example, the solar winds, we now have may have become closer to have the first tracktor beam in the history of mankind! I leave you here with the arcticle!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12620560

But its so minute so as to be irrelevant

Imagine how Jtull could use this on women!

Too bad I already have one...

Shemuel wrote:But its so minute so as to be irrelevant

Well, it might be the start of making more powerfull and eficient ones, right?

Nope, not in Shem's world. If it don't work now, it never will

Do we really have a use for a Tractor Beam, in our Modern time?

Pulling heavy things. Maybe pulling carts eh Krunchy?

Vedic wrote:Do we really have a use for a Tractor Beam, in our Modern time?

So, do we even have a use for these things? :

Actually, it would be much more useful in the industry. You know, it'd replace the machinery supposed to push and pull things, make industrial robots much more accurate. Hell, pneumatic Movement/Control systems would be rendered utterly obsolete if we could make this thing stronger and find a way to reverse the tractor effect, and of course make it reasonably cheap.

Thingy wrote:Actually, it would be much more useful in the industry. You know, it'd replace the machinery supposed to push and pull things, make industrial robots much more accurate. Hell, pneumatic Movement/Control systems would be rendered utterly obsolete if we could make this thing stronger and find a way to reverse the tractor effect, and of course make it reasonably cheap.

The reverse is already possible... In the same way they can cut through hard materials using lasers, they can also push it... In fact, someone was planning a laser propelled elevator to bring people to space, or something like that...

Well, if we can make it strong and cheap enough, those shitty pneumatic systems will become obsolete.

Thingy wrote:Well, if we can make it strong and cheap enough, those shitty pneumatic systems will become obsolete.

True, and this can also mean the start in a new era in transportations, if we make it powerfull enough...

Well, the nature of this discovery means that it will be unlikely to be usable, that's what I meant. I'm not always rampantly pessimistic, just most of the time.

The article wrote:However, he remarked that the effect is only predicted to occur over a short distance - and that the effect first of all needs to be demonstrated in practice.

"It's a very good start," he said. "As always with theory, if one doesn't obtain a theoretical argument that things are impossible for some reason, then it can happen."

It is a good idea, the problem with it is photons are so light (heh heh no pun intended) so they have a very small effect on any other kind of matter, I have no idea about how much energy it would take to move a significantly sized object but I would think that barring a breakthrough in this tech it wont be of any use beyond the microscopic word.