A tractor beam, able to move real-life objects, has been developed at The Australian National University (ANU). Unlike the tractor beams on Star Trek, however, this one uses water, and was tested in a ...

In recent years, scientists have used lasers to construct crude tractor beams that, one day, might be used as grappling hooks in space. Now, for the first time, physicists have succeeded in creating ...

You don’t need to be a beach bum to understand waves: they move objects along with them, pushing boats and swimmers to the shore. There’s even a name for it, the Stokes drift model. But for the first ...

Like in "Star Wars" and "Star Trek," a new tractor beam developed by Australian researchers can pull objects toward itself. Not that it will be used in any space battles. This tractor beam is meant to ...

It can be difficult to get waterborne objects to go in the right direction -- just ask any boat captain who has had to fight waves on a choppy sea. However, researchers at the Australian National ...

An acoustic “tractor beam” that can pull an object by firing sound waves at it has been created by physicists in the UK and US. The beam was made using a commercial ultrasound surgery system and ...

Thanks to the relentless progression of technology, more and more things that were once science fiction are now becoming science fact. Case in point: a few months ago, a multinational team of ...

First researchers created a tractor beam that levitates, pulls and pushes objects, just like in Star Trek. Then they modified the design so you can make one at home. Eric Mack has been a CNET ...

Researchers have adapted a light-based technology employed widely in biology -- known as optical traps or optical tweezers -- to operate in a water-free liquid environment of carbon-rich organic ...

A water-based tractor beam that could contain oil spills and manipulate floating objects cannot yet be explained by mathematical theory. Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get ...

Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have created a tractor beam on water, providing a radical new technique that could confine oil spills, manipulate floating objects or explain ...

If you've ever tried to retrieve an object that's floating away in a lake or the ocean, then you'll know how frustrating it can be, trying to draw that item towards you. According to research recently ...