Yep, a working tractor beam....but to be honest, it probably isn't quite the one your thinking of. Your expecting something like the tractor beam on the Enterprise that could exert force on objects over great distances in outer space.
By comparison, this new "beam" is better known as an "Acoustic" tractor beam. Or a device that can use sound waves to move objects around. So this one could not work in space, because it needs air to function. Still, it is a breakthrough in its own right. Several new technologies had to come to fruition before something like an acoustic tractor beam could be made possible.
And how the acoustic tractor accomplishes the feat of moving object with air pressure alone is still a neat hat trick. How it actually works is damn complicated, but basically it uses two sound pressure "plates" that can be moved in relationship to each other. When the sound pressure waves intersect they set up an interference pattern that can be made to push or pull an object.
This effect can be very useful in a variety of experimental and manufacturing processes here on Earth and even on space laboratories like the ISS.
6 comments:
So that's how they built the pyramids after all.
Well, it is one of the theories of a certain small group. Not one I am part of, but if no one else will bring it up, I will. This is a science AND sci-fi site, after all.
too right Kall too right! though just to play devil's advocate, I remember watching a science program some years back and the piece that caught my attention was a retired engineer who had figured out with simple wedges and balance points how one person could move blocks of tremendous size. His demo was with a 20 ton block that he was able all by himself to move the block around and even spin it on its own axis. Quite a stunt.
They just had him on another show as well. I forget which one, but I saw him myself with that huge white block, including how he walked it. Really cool. Which of course brings up the question what other technology did we have at one time that was lost and not rediscovered for hundreds or thousands of years. Mechanical engineering is an advanced technology, regardless of time period.
anyone who can say with a straight face that all science and technology was invented within the last 500 years or so, needs to have their head examined. There are countless instances of engineering, medicine and science being used regularly across disparate locations on Earth thousands if not 10s of thousands of years ago. The real problem is not that they are forgotten but the systematic destruction of these schools of thought. We know who, and we know why...
Oh yeah, we know that for sure. My self, and lets call it my lineage history has had more than a few run ins.
Really.....hummm well I know my interest is more than slightly peaked...
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