tractor beam
jhalper | September 30, 2014In this weeks’ news, Weizmann Institute scientists and researchers in Australia have invented a sort of tractor beam. In essence, a tractor beam is a wave that propagates outwards but pulls objects toward its point of origin, rather than pushing them out. Like the science fiction versions, such “beams” might be designed in the future to manipulate solid objects in their wake. The waves the researchers created, rather than moving through the interstellar ether, propagate on the surface of water. Instead of latching on to Klingon spaceships, the scientists think the wave-induced surface flows…