Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Looks Common Hated everyone and Welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: My name is John and Strickland. I'm one of the
Speaker 1: two hosts of our show, and I'm Lauren Volke Bam
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to laugh at all this episode.
Speaker 1: All right, that's fair. Podcasting is a very serious business.
Speaker 1: It is. Let us, let us be somber, despite the
Speaker 1: fact we're talking about a really cool futuristic technology. Tractor
Speaker 1: bean tractor beans. Yes, yeah, this is This was something
Speaker 1: that Lauren had suggested because she saw an item in
Speaker 1: the news, and at the time, I would imagine Lauren
Speaker 1: had no idea how incredibly complex a topic this would
Speaker 1: turn out to be. Yeah, as it turns out, particle
Speaker 1: physics is not simple necessarily, but we're gonna tackle it anyway.
Speaker 1: We are. We are indeed, because you know what, we've
Speaker 1: watched a lot of Star Trek between the two of us.
Speaker 1: We have faith in ourselves. So let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: what tractor beam is, especially in that realm of science fiction,
Speaker 1: because I think that's where most people have encountered the
Speaker 1: original Ida, right sure, and especially since tractor beams do
Speaker 1: not exist as such in three dimensions in the real world,
Speaker 1: yet not on the macro level anyway, right, not not
Speaker 1: nothing that you could see with your own two eyeballs. Right,
Speaker 1: So essentially it's a intergalactic tow truck kind of thing
Speaker 1: beam of light that can be used to pull objects
Speaker 1: towards the source of that light. Yeah, which is that's
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal because, as we understand in physics, light does
Speaker 1: in fact exert a pressure. You might push stuff. Kepler
Speaker 1: said that, Yep, exactly, Yep, yep, Kepler. Kepler observed this,
Speaker 1: and in fact it serves as the basis for uh
Speaker 1: futuristic technologies such as sun sales somewhere sales. These would
Speaker 1: be enormous sales, literally sales that you would extend from
Speaker 1: a spacecraft and allow sunlight to press against the sale
Speaker 1: and thus propelled the StarCraft. Because you're talking about being
Speaker 1: in an environment where there's no there's no graby that's
Speaker 1: affecting you apart from well, I mean, they're gonna have
Speaker 1: gravity within the Solar System, but you're not working like
Speaker 1: trying to escape gravity. At that point. You're actually already
Speaker 1: out in space, so you're not having to worry as
Speaker 1: much about things like friction and gravity, so smaller forces,
Speaker 1: for example, photons can so. So to have a kind
Speaker 1: of light that would be able to trap an object
Speaker 1: and even pull it in is sort of counterintuitive based
Speaker 1: upon the knowledge that photons can push stuff away. So
Speaker 1: we've seen tractor beams used in lots of different science
Speaker 1: fiction you. Star Trek, of course, is one of the
Speaker 1: big examples. Yeah. The first reference was actually in The
Speaker 1: Skylark of Space, which was a drama by East Smith,
Speaker 1: originally serialized and published a novel in I did not
Speaker 1: know that. I do know that it's used in Star
Speaker 1: Trek quite a bit. Uh. There are two things that
Speaker 1: you have to remember about Star Trek tractor beams. They
Speaker 1: can pull just about anything any air, and if you
Speaker 1: reverse the polarity, you can turn it into a weapon. Well,
Speaker 1: reversing the polarity, as we all know, is how you
Speaker 1: do things in Star Trek. Yeah, I was explaining earlier.
Speaker 1: It is the have you tried turning it off and
Speaker 1: on again approach in Star Trek. If if it's something's
Speaker 1: not working, reverse the polarity and then it works. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course in Star Wars it was used
Speaker 1: the Death Star catches the Millennium Falcon in a tractor
Speaker 1: beam and a series of tractor beings a whole connexus
Speaker 1: of tractor being right and pulls it back into the
Speaker 1: Death Star so that the Millenium Falcon cannot make its
Speaker 1: daring escape. This, of course allows Darth Vader to face
Speaker 1: off against Obi Wan Kenobi, and I could go on,
Speaker 1: but that's not what this episode is about. Also, I
Speaker 1: suspect that a few of our listeners have seen Star Wars,
Speaker 1: maybe one or two. Episode four is amazing. If you
Speaker 1: have not seen it, you need to go check it out.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Yeah, so, so science fiction is one of
Speaker 1: those things that is a really useful tool for storytellers. Uh,
Speaker 1: if they have a story about a ship encountering so
Speaker 1: sort of wreck or other kind of of body out
Speaker 1: in space, it needs to be pulled away. And the
Speaker 1: nice thing is is that we've got scientists here on
Speaker 1: Earth who are saying, hey, how can we do this
Speaker 1: science fiction thing for reels? Right? Knowing how light behaves
Speaker 1: and uh, and maybe finding new ways to make light
Speaker 1: behave in perhaps an unexpected fashion. Well, I suspect that,
Speaker 1: in fact, Star Trek used some actual research that was
Speaker 1: going on in the nineteen sixties as a basis for
Speaker 1: their tractor beam, because according according to the Star Trek universe,
Speaker 1: the way that their tractor beam works is it's actually
Speaker 1: a graviton force beam. And I just made a little
Speaker 1: quote marks in the air for the benefit of nobody. Really,
Speaker 1: so that was weird. Gravitons are hypothetical particles that that
Speaker 1: essentially mediate the force of gravity. Uh, they're hypothetical because
Speaker 1: we have not observed an actual graviton. We don't know
Speaker 1: how we would. We don't we know that in order
Speaker 1: for our quantum model of the universe to make sense,
Speaker 1: we need something like a graviton to exist to explain
Speaker 1: the force of gravity. There are four fundamental forces in
Speaker 1: the universe. There's strong, nuclear, weak nuclear, electro magnetic, and gravity.
Speaker 1: Out of those, gravity is the weakest, but it's also
Speaker 1: the one that we cannot easily incorporate into the quantum
Speaker 1: model of physics. Right, It's sort of assumed by Einstein's
Speaker 1: general theory of relativity that gravitational waves are a thing
Speaker 1: that exists that ripples in the spacetime continuum caused by
Speaker 1: very large moving objects, particularly, but nobody has detected these
Speaker 1: so so really the way we observe this is through
Speaker 1: the force of gravity. I mean, that's that's that's we
Speaker 1: can see the outcome. We just can't we can explain
Speaker 1: exactly so, And to to explain to you guys how
Speaker 1: weak gravity is in comparison to the other forces, here's
Speaker 1: a very simple, uh experiment anyone can do anyone who
Speaker 1: has access to a comb and a balloon. So let's
Speaker 1: say you've got you know, get a balloon. You've just
Speaker 1: inflay the balloon with oxygen. Don't do helium because that
Speaker 1: will negate the results of this test. Check. So oxygen
Speaker 1: inflated balloon, you sat down on a table. Gravity is
Speaker 1: pulling the balloon downward. I am oversimplifying here, so physicists
Speaker 1: please don't don't write in and complain. But the balloon
Speaker 1: is held to the table in part due to friction,
Speaker 1: but also in part due to gravity. If you were
Speaker 1: to take your comb and rub it against say a sweater,
Speaker 1: and get built up some stag electricity on the comb,
Speaker 1: and then touch the comb to the balloon and lift,
Speaker 1: you would see that the stag electricity that was generated
Speaker 1: while you were rubbing the comb against your your sweater
Speaker 1: would be enough to attract the balloon and lifted off
Speaker 1: the table. That means that the any amount of electromatic force,
Speaker 1: the static is stronger than the gravity. And the gravity, Yeah,
Speaker 1: You've got an entire planet beneath you that that is
Speaker 1: got this very strong gravitational pull, strong in comparison to
Speaker 1: other things that we directly observe throughout the day. And
Speaker 1: yet it is dwarfed by strong enough comb Yeah, strong
Speaker 1: enough to pull a bowling ball from the top of
Speaker 1: tower right right, so, and and gravity just so. To
Speaker 1: complete the whole picture here, it depends on two things.
Speaker 1: It depends on really you have to have two different bodies,
Speaker 1: but it depends on the body's mass and their distance
Speaker 1: from one another. But they do exert gravity, a gravitational
Speaker 1: pull against each other. So, for instance, I have a
Speaker 1: cup of tea in front of me. I am exerting
Speaker 1: a very tiny gravitational pull on the cup of tea,
Speaker 1: and it is exerting a very tiny gravitational pull on me.
Speaker 1: Now this is dwarfed by the fact that I'm also
Speaker 1: on the planet Earth, and that the Earth is exerting
Speaker 1: gravitational force on both of you. Right, So I you know,
Speaker 1: I can't observe this. I don't really, I'm not aware
Speaker 1: of it in any way, but that's that's yeah. So
Speaker 1: keeping that in mind, one easy, relatively easy way of
Speaker 1: having a tractor beam like effect, even though you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be being mean anything, is to use the gravity of
Speaker 1: one object to influence the movement of another object. Now,
Speaker 1: this is something that we've talked about before on tech stuff,
Speaker 1: when we were chatting about could an asteroid destroy the
Speaker 1: Earth if, if, if some space agency. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say NASA because that's the one that I'm most familiar with.
Speaker 1: But if NASA were too identified that an asteroid twenty
Speaker 1: years away has the the uh, the potential to h Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be a bad thing. Yes, as we all
Speaker 1: learned in the documentary Armageddon. Yes, that wonder whole documentary
Speaker 1: that taught me that Steve Busimmy is a better singer
Speaker 1: than Ben Affleck uh, which I had no way of
Speaker 1: knowing until I saw that anyway, that one way of
Speaker 1: potentially deflecting the asteroid would be to send a spacecraft
Speaker 1: up so that you move the spacecraft so it's close
Speaker 1: enough to the asteroid so that they are are pulling
Speaker 1: one another with a gravitational hole, and then you use
Speaker 1: thrusters with the spacecraft to just very slowly push just
Speaker 1: not really really it's pull. You're yeah, you're pulling the
Speaker 1: asteroid because as you move the spacecraft away, the gravitational
Speaker 1: pull makes the asteroid move with it, and all you
Speaker 1: have to do is move it. The further out you
Speaker 1: go from Earth, the less you need to move the
Speaker 1: asteroids so that it has it misses the Earth, right,
Speaker 1: because you're talking about angles, So a couple of degrees
Speaker 1: of difference way the way way the heck out in
Speaker 1: space to make enough difference to not kill everything on it, right,
Speaker 1: it will miss the planet entirely. So that's the idea.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of like a tractor beam in the
Speaker 1: sense that you're using an object to tow another object,
Speaker 1: in this case objects that are in space, but you're
Speaker 1: not actually shooting a beam of anything, right, However, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not made of light. It doesn't do that
Speaker 1: cool visual effect. Does you have a sound effect, which
Speaker 1: obviously that would not not anything in space anyway? Sure,
Speaker 1: but hey, why why should we start criticizing Now that's
Speaker 1: a that's a whole of an episode. Um and and
Speaker 1: so in the nineteen sixties, people were really excited about
Speaker 1: detecting gravitational waves, and a few people in fact suggested
Speaker 1: that we might make a gravity laser. A couple of people,
Speaker 1: Helper and Laurent, proposed that this could be called a gazer,
Speaker 1: which I think is a terrific word. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think means something entirely different. These are modern times, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I agree with you. I think at this
Speaker 1: point the scientific community would say, can we can? We can?
Speaker 1: We can? We vote on this um. They proposed that
Speaker 1: we could vibrate sometimes of electric crystals and create a
Speaker 1: whole thing, And but that's it's never really come to
Speaker 1: fruition because the above re we have never discovered gravitons,
Speaker 1: We have never measured gravitational waves. Right, for us to
Speaker 1: be able to create an object that would use gravitons
Speaker 1: to to make a tractor beam, we first sort of
Speaker 1: need to prove that gravitons in fact exist, yes, because
Speaker 1: again they're hypothetical right now. It's sort of like the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, right The Higgs boson was a theoretical particle
Speaker 1: that physicists said for our understanding of the universe to
Speaker 1: make sense, we need this thing to exist to explain
Speaker 1: why matter has mass same sort of thing. In order
Speaker 1: for our understanding of gravity to make sense within the
Speaker 1: within the framework that we have of our knowledge of
Speaker 1: the universe, knowing that we are by our very nature
Speaker 1: limited in our understanding, a graviton needs to exist for
Speaker 1: that model to really make sense. So we're talking about mathematically, yes,
Speaker 1: these things have to exist, but in reality we just
Speaker 1: haven't tracked it down yet. So if we ever do,
Speaker 1: maybe we can make some sort of technology that can
Speaker 1: take advantage of that. But until then, until then, maybe
Speaker 1: no gravitational lasers. Yeah, I personally hope that we do
Speaker 1: crack that nut, because that would be I mean, it
Speaker 1: would be an incredibly useful tool, and not just in
Speaker 1: the context of space exploration. That's the one that we
Speaker 1: all think about, but us again in science fiction, that
Speaker 1: tends to be where tractor beams come into play. But
Speaker 1: as it turns out, tractor beams can have a really
Speaker 1: useful uhuh, well in implementation here on Earth and space
Speaker 1: on the planet, and I mean, moving things is hard,
Speaker 1: they're heavy or even if they're or they're really small,
Speaker 1: and so uh yeah, we'll talk a bit in a
Speaker 1: second all about how some scientists are making micro versions
Speaker 1: of tractor beams here on Earth and what those could
Speaker 1: be used for. But first, let's take a moment to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor for this episode, and now back to
Speaker 1: the show. All right, So we've talked about using gravity
Speaker 1: to create a tractor beam like effect, or possibly even
Speaker 1: using gravitons, assuming we ever understand them. But that's not
Speaker 1: the only way scientists are looking into creating a tractor
Speaker 1: beam like device. There's actually been quite a bit of
Speaker 1: news over the last decade about scientists using various ways
Speaker 1: of manipulating light to pull an object as opposed to
Speaker 1: push it away. Right, Starting way back in six people
Speaker 1: started playing with what's called optical tweezers, which are lasers
Speaker 1: that are capable of manipulating molecules and moving them with precision.
Speaker 1: And now this is not pulling a particle towards the
Speaker 1: light source, so it's not technically attractor beam, right, but
Speaker 1: it is. It is a method of manipulating microscopic particles
Speaker 1: very precisely. So if you're thinking about a plane like
Speaker 1: an X and y axis, you could move particles within
Speaker 1: the X and y axis, but you're not moving them
Speaker 1: along the Z axis. That would be you know, from
Speaker 1: the source of light to wherever the particle is. So
Speaker 1: in relation to the source of light, the particle would
Speaker 1: not get closer further away, but you could trap it
Speaker 1: and move it within that x y plane. That's that's
Speaker 1: my understanding. Yeah, yeah, and these are well, I I
Speaker 1: that's my understanding as well. These the laser beams that
Speaker 1: are being used for this have a Gaussian intensity profiles,
Speaker 1: which means that they're brighter in the center than they
Speaker 1: are at the edges. Right. A Gaussian distribution is a
Speaker 1: normal distribution, and it can be for anything from lasers too. Really,
Speaker 1: you can even see this in social sciences where you
Speaker 1: do a survey and you have a bell curve that
Speaker 1: shows a normal distribution that's essentially a Gaussian distribution. So, okay,
Speaker 1: light has momentum right, right, and so when it hits
Speaker 1: an object, the object bends the light, which changes its momentum,
Speaker 1: and thus the object is pushed back equally and oppositely
Speaker 1: by the light. Okay, I see, so the lights momentum
Speaker 1: has changed. The object's momentum is also changed, correct according
Speaker 1: to the conservation of momentum, which you can see in
Speaker 1: normal non microscopic classic physics. Right, And so the Gaussian
Speaker 1: beam is important because if the sample gets off center
Speaker 1: in the beam, the weaker light of the edges is
Speaker 1: bending around the object and pushing it out, but the
Speaker 1: stronger lighted center is bending around it and pushing it
Speaker 1: back in, and the stronger force winds. I see. Oh okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes way more sense than everything else I read,
Speaker 1: because everything I read was a lot of this. This
Speaker 1: research that we did for this particular podcast is in
Speaker 1: is from scientific journals and uh, and this is a
Speaker 1: good point for us to make. Lauren and I we're
Speaker 1: advocates of science education. We both love science. That being said,
Speaker 1: neither of us are scientists, and we certainly are not
Speaker 1: particle physicists. And so when you get down to the
Speaker 1: quantum level, there's a certain level of understanding that we
Speaker 1: are able to achieve. And beyond that, this stuff is
Speaker 1: my It is like magic to us. So we're going
Speaker 1: to explain things as best we can, but please understand
Speaker 1: there are subtleties to this that we cannot easily uh explain,
Speaker 1: because we haven't dedicated our lives to understanding them exactly.
Speaker 1: And and but so if we get anything wrong, please
Speaker 1: do right us in Um, we love getting that kind
Speaker 1: of feedback, right, Yeah, No, we definitely want to to
Speaker 1: communicate the correct information as best we can. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know this, this is exciting stuff. So in this case,
Speaker 1: what Laurence talking about is using light to to uh
Speaker 1: to isolate and then manipulate microscopic particles. But at this
Speaker 1: point the stage what we're talking about does not include
Speaker 1: pulling those particles towards the light source. However, we have discovered,
Speaker 1: or rather I should say we not reedibly smart people
Speaker 1: have discovered ways of using light to actually pull things
Speaker 1: towards the source in a bunch of different ways. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: there's one of those is called an optical vortex. Um.
Speaker 1: Sounds kind of kind of freaky, uh people. The the
Speaker 1: main research that I've read from this was from Australian
Speaker 1: National University around so pretty recently, and the the idea
Speaker 1: of this one is that they use a hollow laser
Speaker 1: beam to trap light absorbing particles, and um, they get
Speaker 1: trapped in the center of this laser beam because the
Speaker 1: heated air molecules around them are pushing in on them goutches,
Speaker 1: so they cannot they can't escape the laser beam. They're
Speaker 1: stuck in that little hollow center in the hollow center
Speaker 1: in the in the the doughnuts shaped laguer Gaussian laser beam. Yes,
Speaker 1: that right there, that thing exactly that you just said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have the note. I'm so glad that you did
Speaker 1: more research on this, because when I read that, my
Speaker 1: eyes kind of glazed over. Yeah. Apparently they were able
Speaker 1: to move particles about one and a half meters in
Speaker 1: the air. Yeah, it's it's really exciting. By they found
Speaker 1: out that by using too concentric hollow lasers, they can
Speaker 1: adjust to the brightness of the two of them, there
Speaker 1: by heating and cooling the air around the molecules and
Speaker 1: and then therefore have the molecules move up and down
Speaker 1: as they will through this hollow tube of light. Wow.
Speaker 1: So so you're using two different lasers in order to
Speaker 1: make that maintain this kind of movement. That makes sense,
Speaker 1: I understand now. Yeah, I was wondering how that worked beforehand.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that that totally makes sense. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: these are nanofoam particles that they were using to the
Speaker 1: got transported over a meter and and all of this
Speaker 1: is on the scale again of a very microscopic things. Right,
Speaker 1: That's something that's important, and we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that when we finish with all the different
Speaker 1: laser methods. But yeah, the methods we're talking about are
Speaker 1: very exciting, Don't get us wrong. They are incredibly exciting,
Speaker 1: particularly in certain very specific implementations like in the medical field.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is all going to be extremely exciting
Speaker 1: for for example, removing bacteria from samples, sorting cells, imnically
Speaker 1: manipulating DNA strands is something that optical tweezers have been
Speaker 1: used extensively for, right, so that there are really uses
Speaker 1: for this. But these are not the same technologies that
Speaker 1: will let us move spacecraft like toe spacecraft away. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about why that is when we get a
Speaker 1: little further in, because there are a couple of other
Speaker 1: laser methods that we need to talk about, right right, Um,
Speaker 1: back back on the kind of sale, the sort of
Speaker 1: solar sale theme that we were discussing earlier. Optical lift
Speaker 1: is another version of of light that can be used
Speaker 1: to do stuff. It's it's actually just a really simple
Speaker 1: analog of aerodynamic lift, which of course is when um,
Speaker 1: you create huh, how is it it's higher pressure under
Speaker 1: awing than over a wing, and therefore letting a plane
Speaker 1: lift off the ground in the game. Before we get
Speaker 1: any further physicists, that's also an oversimplification, and we acknowledge that, yes,
Speaker 1: there's more than just there's more than just that when
Speaker 1: it comes to getting an airplane off the ground. Absolutely
Speaker 1: know all about the other forward momentum and everything else,
Speaker 1: but but that that is the concept of lift. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you, And so to get slightly fewer angry emails,
Speaker 1: it's only because Chris and I received all of those
Speaker 1: emails already, but but deservedly so, right, Oh no, absolutely, yes,
Speaker 1: we love negative feedback. But so I nearly spit tea
Speaker 1: all over my laptop. Please don't take that as a
Speaker 1: as a Please don't take Lawrence. Lawrence's statement as a
Speaker 1: knee means to send us the most negative feedback ever,
Speaker 1: because my feelings do get hurt. Oh and I, I
Speaker 1: apparent you just made a complete liar out of me.
Speaker 1: That you almost snorfing your tea completely made me crack up. Excellent.
Speaker 1: But anyway back to optical lift, it's uh. The scientists
Speaker 1: have discovered that that you can take an object with
Speaker 1: a differently shaped top and bottom surface, and it will
Speaker 1: experience a lift force when placed in a uniform stream
Speaker 1: of light that's fast. This is all blowing my mind
Speaker 1: because before we did this research, I never knew about
Speaker 1: these different properties of light and and it just it
Speaker 1: really stresses to me one amazing universe. This is, you know,
Speaker 1: to know that things behave on such a different level
Speaker 1: than my previous understanding, and also illustrates quite effectively how
Speaker 1: ignorant I am. But I love to learn, so that's okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we get we get paid to learn this stuff and
Speaker 1: pass it on to you, which is basically the most
Speaker 1: exciting thing. Um. One of the other categories that I
Speaker 1: ran across were optical conveyors, which are really fun. Those
Speaker 1: are those are the ones that are using bessel beams,
Speaker 1: and I think I think Jonathan has a whole section
Speaker 1: about this one. Yeah, not a whole section, but I
Speaker 1: can at least tell you what a bessel beam is,
Speaker 1: because when I encountered that term, I thought, huh, what
Speaker 1: what exactly do they mean by bessel beam? It's a
Speaker 1: specific type of radiation, and that sort of radiation can
Speaker 1: be a laser, it can be electromagnetic, it can be acoustic,
Speaker 1: it could be gravitational. It doesn't really matter what the
Speaker 1: type of radiation is. It's the form it takes. And
Speaker 1: that form as a radiation where the amplitude is described
Speaker 1: by a Bessel function of the first kind. Does that
Speaker 1: mean essentially, it means that as this radiation moves forward,
Speaker 1: it does not diffract in any way. It doesn't diffuse,
Speaker 1: it does not spread out. In other words, it remains concentrated.
Speaker 1: So what we think of that like a laser beam.
Speaker 1: When you shine a laser beam, it doesn't spread out
Speaker 1: like a flashlight does. But this is a very specific
Speaker 1: format of that. And in fact, because actually those those
Speaker 1: laser beams that were that you point at something are
Speaker 1: Gaussian laser beams. That's we discussed there, and so this
Speaker 1: is different, is different. This is different. It is it
Speaker 1: is focused, It does not diffract in any way, it
Speaker 1: does not spread out at all. And in fact, one
Speaker 1: a a a feature of a true vessel beam would
Speaker 1: be that if you were to just interrupt part of
Speaker 1: this vessel beam, let's let's imagine that the vessel beam
Speaker 1: is as big around as a pencil, Okay, just for
Speaker 1: the purposes of illustration, and then Imagine that you had, uh,
Speaker 1: used a sheet of paper and cut a little slit
Speaker 1: in that pencil, and you make the sheet of paper
Speaker 1: interrupt the vessel beam. Right, So you've got the sheet
Speaker 1: of paper that's interrupting half the vessel beam. The other
Speaker 1: half is going beyond the edge of the paper. A
Speaker 1: true vessel beam will heal itself beyond the point of interruption.
Speaker 1: So if I were to interrupt that beam further down
Speaker 1: the beam, it would become whole against so it would
Speaker 1: be the same diameter as it was um at the
Speaker 1: before a point where you had that interruption. So that's
Speaker 1: an awesome thing about a vessel beam. Now here's the
Speaker 1: here's the caveat. A true vessel beam would require essentially
Speaker 1: unlimited power. Uh So Dr Doom would want to make one, certainly,
Speaker 1: but none of us would be capable of doing it.
Speaker 1: It's a true vessel beam is effectively impossible for us
Speaker 1: to make. We can make things that approach vessel beams
Speaker 1: and that emulate many of its features, but a true
Speaker 1: one is beyond our capability. That is the short and
Speaker 1: sweet definition of vessel beam. And do keep in mind
Speaker 1: we're not just talking lasers, Like I said, it could
Speaker 1: even be acoustic, so you could create a vessel beam
Speaker 1: of acoustic energy and make a noise that could be
Speaker 1: heard perfectly at the destination, no matter how far away
Speaker 1: it was. That that is fascinating, pretty awesome, That's terrific.
Speaker 1: So so researchers are using these. Specifically, some people at
Speaker 1: New York University, building on research by a Chinese team
Speaker 1: at the a Star Data Storage Institute, I believe in
Speaker 1: around two thousand people have been working on using a
Speaker 1: lens to bend and overlap two of these vessel beams
Speaker 1: um thereby creating what I can crudely, crudely describe a
Speaker 1: kind of a strobe effect that will, Okay, it'll hit
Speaker 1: the front of a particle, and because of that, because
Speaker 1: it can reform around an object, it will reform behind
Speaker 1: the particle with enough energy that it actually pushes the
Speaker 1: particle back towards the light source. All right, So what's
Speaker 1: happening is the photon is is hitting the particle in
Speaker 1: such a way as to give it a little kick
Speaker 1: back toward the actual source of the photons correct, which
Speaker 1: is kind of crazy. It's awesome. Like, there was one
Speaker 1: point where I was reading one of these descriptions, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, the only way I could describe this
Speaker 1: is if you were thinking about having a smaller particles
Speaker 1: being put forward, because larger particles are sinking down, so
Speaker 1: instead of being pushed down, they're actually going up. And
Speaker 1: then the more I read about, the more I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is a complete misunderstanding of this, and I cannot
Speaker 1: go with this analogy. And that's what I thought. I
Speaker 1: hope Lauren has got discovered, and luckily she did. Yes,
Speaker 1: I like the physics. The physics were always the interesting
Speaker 1: part to me. I was always terrible at algebra, but
Speaker 1: really good at geometry. See, I love classical physics. Quantum
Speaker 1: physics makes my head hurt. I just that's a fun headache.
Speaker 1: I like that. I like the quantum physics headache. If
Speaker 1: better you than me, what's that terrific quote off? If
Speaker 1: you're not kind of upset by quantum physics, you haven't
Speaker 1: understood it properly. I think all of us haven't understood
Speaker 1: it properly. I think the people who haven't understood it
Speaker 1: probably the most have the biggest headaches. Those are quantum
Speaker 1: physicists anyway. But then I say that as as I
Speaker 1: you know, every quantum physicist interview I've said I've watched
Speaker 1: tends to include a question that's all similar to, but
Speaker 1: do you really understand what it is you're talking about?
Speaker 1: In the quantum physicist almost always says, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a certain level where I don't like there's certain things
Speaker 1: that you just say, all right, this is how it is,
Speaker 1: because that's how it is. But to be able to
Speaker 1: answer why I can't and so it's, you know, one
Speaker 1: of those things you just have to accept and my
Speaker 1: brain starts to melt out of your ears. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of screaming and waving of fists inside the
Speaker 1: cranty the Yeah. But so the special being optical conveyor
Speaker 1: technology might be an interesting practical use for it could
Speaker 1: be to test the tensile strength of cells. For example,
Speaker 1: if if a cell has been infected with malaria, it's
Speaker 1: more rigid than a normal blood cell, and so it
Speaker 1: could be super useful in tiny, microscopic medical purposes. Similar
Speaker 1: to another breakthrough that was very recent as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast. We're recording this in early February,
Speaker 1: and there were some publications that we're talking about an
Speaker 1: experiment that had been performed by scientists from Scotland and
Speaker 1: the Czech Republic about using a beam of light with
Speaker 1: a specific geometry to pull particles of polystyrene. And these
Speaker 1: particles are very very small, in fact, beyond microscopic. We're
Speaker 1: talking about nanometers, four nimes, about four d ten nanometers specifically.
Speaker 1: Think most of the particles we've been talking about have
Speaker 1: been on on that scale. Yeah, pretty pretty tiny stuff,
Speaker 1: but nimes and one thousand nanometer particles essentially, think about
Speaker 1: tiny spheres of polystyrene that are only a few hundred
Speaker 1: nimeters in diameter. That's essentially what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: And they found that by uh polarizing the light in
Speaker 1: a particular way, they could manipulate these particles. And in fact,
Speaker 1: not only could they manipulate the particles, but depending upon
Speaker 1: the way they polarized the light, they could so electively
Speaker 1: manipulate particles of a certain size while not affecting particles
Speaker 1: of another size. Yeah, there's a there's a little video
Speaker 1: of this, by the way, and a press release will
Speaker 1: link it somewhere on our on our tech staff media. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll have to take a look at this. It's pretty
Speaker 1: amazing because you think about that that means that you
Speaker 1: will be able to selectively uh grip, sort and move
Speaker 1: right particles, so that way you could you could keep
Speaker 1: some undisturbed while you're while the ones you're interested in,
Speaker 1: those are the ones you can manipulate. And uh and
Speaker 1: that is a huge breakthrough you're talking about just by
Speaker 1: by again changing the nature of the light itself, being
Speaker 1: able to affect very specific sizes of particles, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter what the particle is made out of.
Speaker 1: They were using polystyrene in a liquid solution, So again
Speaker 1: this was another breakthrough, was that this was something that
Speaker 1: could work within a liquid, making it very useful for
Speaker 1: medical purposes. So if you wanted to take a blood
Speaker 1: cell and you needed to move certain particles in that
Speaker 1: blood cell out or off to a side so that
Speaker 1: you could either examine them more closely, or perhaps get
Speaker 1: them out of the way so you can examine something
Speaker 1: else in the blood cell more closely, it would be
Speaker 1: a very useful tool. I one description that I saw
Speaker 1: of this said that uh and and this one in particular,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of very intelligent people have said
Speaker 1: very erudite things about all of the rest of these
Speaker 1: forms of tractor beam manipulation, and I read them and
Speaker 1: have said them back to you. This one is so
Speaker 1: new that not that many people who are smarter than
Speaker 1: us have really said that many things about it, and
Speaker 1: so therefore my understanding is tenuous. But one explanation that
Speaker 1: I saw said that they used a mirror to bounce
Speaker 1: the laser beam back across itself, interfering with the head
Speaker 1: on photons and thereby pushing right the The interesting thing
Speaker 1: to me was that it was through that interference that
Speaker 1: creates this pulling. It was not, however, because you you
Speaker 1: hear mirror and you think, oh, well, all they're doing
Speaker 1: is shooting the photons, bouncing it off the mirror, and
Speaker 1: then the photons hit the particle and then push the particle.
Speaker 1: But that's not what's happened. That's not what's happening. It's
Speaker 1: the it's the interaction of the uh, the oncoming beam
Speaker 1: and the reflected beam that create this pulling motion. And that,
Speaker 1: to me is phenomenal because at first I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: what they're really doing it is just a mirror. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just they're just pushing, they're not pulling. But that's
Speaker 1: not the case. That actually is pulling. Actually, they're The
Speaker 1: really fascinating thing about this is that apparently, under certain conditions,
Speaker 1: the objects held by the beam rearranged themselves into a
Speaker 1: structure that made the pull stronger. That's pretty awesome. I
Speaker 1: mean this, this is so mind blowing to me that this,
Speaker 1: this world on the nanoscale is every time I read
Speaker 1: anything about it, it amazes me. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the two areas I find the most interesting when it
Speaker 1: comes to exploration are outer space and nanospace because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of parallels, I mean, weird parallels between
Speaker 1: outer space and nanospace fractals. Fractals say that that's a
Speaker 1: that is a known quantity. That just makes me think
Speaker 1: of the Jonathan Coulton song Mandel Brought Set, which is awesome.
Speaker 1: Have you heard that? I do not believe I have
Speaker 1: what I guess what we're doing. After the podcast is over,
Speaker 1: you get to hear a song. Alright, So uh we
Speaker 1: we we alluded to the fact that this is stuff
Speaker 1: that works on a microscopic scale and would not translate
Speaker 1: to macroscopic Yes, and here's the reason why. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: reason why is that all of all of this work
Speaker 1: with lasers. Lasers of course, um can burn stuff and
Speaker 1: if you had a big enough laser to move you know,
Speaker 1: the one of the physicists I think mentioned a football.
Speaker 1: I assume that they were meaning a soccer ball because
Speaker 1: they were from Scotland and that was that was Thomas Sismar.
Speaker 1: There you go, um, and it would fry a long
Speaker 1: time before you would move that soccer ball. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: other words, the laser would have to be of such
Speaker 1: an intensity and size as to destroy whatever it was
Speaker 1: you were trying to move. So it might move, but
Speaker 1: only because someone didn't want it to burn down everything else, right,
Speaker 1: it would be moved by someone else who's saying, why
Speaker 1: do you have this flaming soccer ball in the middle
Speaker 1: of the field. Yeah, that's the that's a problem obviously.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a it's a non trivial problem,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I know it's a non trivial problem,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like I'm being silly, but no, it's
Speaker 1: non trivial, and that as far as we are able
Speaker 1: to determine, there's no way to get around that using
Speaker 1: this particular implementation of the tractor beam idea. So this
Speaker 1: would strictly be on the nano and micro scale and
Speaker 1: never get beyond that. That does not mean that we
Speaker 1: won't find some other way of creating a tractor beam.
Speaker 1: We very well made, but it's not going to be
Speaker 1: using these particular methods because obviously we would end up
Speaker 1: destroying whatever it was we were trying to manipulate. So
Speaker 1: we hope, we hope that we will see some of
Speaker 1: that in the future. Yeah, it's a really exciting area
Speaker 1: of development. And uh, any of you who are interested
Speaker 1: in this sort of stuff, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different articles that are available out there, including articles that
Speaker 1: have been published by these scientists. So if you are
Speaker 1: of a scientific mind and you want to learn more,
Speaker 1: there are lots of opportunities to learn about it online.
Speaker 1: And well we'll we'll link to some of those on
Speaker 1: our various social media outlets since you can get a
Speaker 1: chance to take a look at it. Because it really
Speaker 1: is fascinating stuff. And uh, and we love tackling these
Speaker 1: these uh, these sort of topics. They're very challenging, and
Speaker 1: challenge is a good thing. I mean, if you if
Speaker 1: we just sit there and talk about, hey I like
Speaker 1: video games. Hey I also like video games, that it's
Speaker 1: boring for everybody. I mean We know you guys would
Speaker 1: get tired of that too. So if you have specific
Speaker 1: topics that you think you know. I know this would
Speaker 1: be a tall order, but I really want to hear
Speaker 1: more about it, send it our way. Do you want
Speaker 1: to know about invisibility cloaks, Let us know. We will
Speaker 1: look into it and we will explain them to you.
Speaker 1: Maybe not even using Harry Potter as a reference. That's unlikely.
Speaker 1: That's a tall order. But but if you have any requests,
Speaker 1: send them our way. There are multiple ways to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us. One of them is email and
Speaker 1: our email addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or
Speaker 1: let us know on Facebook or Twitter. You can find
Speaker 1: us at both those locations with the handle text stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and Lauren and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it hastaff works dot com