Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: today is a Friday, so it is time for another
Speaker 1: tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published on February
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. It is titled tech Stuff is Caught
Speaker 1: in a Tractor Beam. Lauren Vogelbaum and I sat down
Speaker 1: to talk about the technology of tractor beams. Is it
Speaker 1: realistic in what ways? Is it realistic versus unrealistic? How
Speaker 1: might it actually work? And would it be remarkably different
Speaker 1: from the way it's depicted in science fiction films. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoy it, So let's sit back and
Speaker 1: listen to this classic episode tractor Beam, tractor beams. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is This was something that Lauren had suggested because
Speaker 1: she saw an item in the news, and at the time,
Speaker 1: I would imagine Lauren had no idea how incredibly complex
Speaker 1: a topic this would turn out to be. Ye, As
Speaker 1: it turns out, particle physics is not simple necessarily, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna tackle it anyway. We are We are indeed,
Speaker 1: because you know what, we've watched a lot of star
Speaker 1: Trek between the two of us. We have faith in ourselves.
Speaker 1: So let's let's talk about what a tractor beam is,
Speaker 1: especially in that realm of science fiction, because I think
Speaker 1: that's where most people have encountered the original idea, right sure,
Speaker 1: and especially since tractor beams do not exist as such
Speaker 1: in three dimensions in the real world yet, not on
Speaker 1: the macro level anyway, right, not not nothing that you
Speaker 1: could see with your own two eyeballs. Right. So essentially
Speaker 1: it's a intergalactic tow truck kind of thing. Yes, a
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 time push stuff. Kepler said
Speaker 1: that Yep, exactly, yep, yep Kepler. Kepler observed this, and
Speaker 1: in fact it serves as the basis for uh futuristic
Speaker 1: technologies such as sun sales. Similar sales. These would be
Speaker 1: enormous sales, literally sales that you would extend from a
Speaker 1: spacecraft and allow sunlight to press against the sale and
Speaker 1: thus propelled the StarCraft because you're talking about being in
Speaker 1: an environment where there's no there's no gravity that's affecting
Speaker 1: you apart from well, I mean, they're gonna have gravity
Speaker 1: within the Solar System, but you're not working like trying
Speaker 1: to escape gravity. At that point. You're actually already out
Speaker 1: in space, so you're not having to worry as much
Speaker 1: about things like friction and gravity. So smaller forces, for example,
Speaker 1: photons can so so to have a kind of light
Speaker 1: that would be able to trap an object and even
Speaker 1: pull it in is sort of counterintuitive based upon the
Speaker 1: knowledge that photons can push stuff away. So we've seen
Speaker 1: tractor beams used in lots of different science fiction you.
Speaker 1: Star Trek, of course, is one of the big examples. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The first reference was actually in The Skylark of Space,
Speaker 1: which was a drama by Et Smith, originally serialized in
Speaker 1: n and published as a novel in nine. Wow, I
Speaker 1: did not know that. I do know that it's used
Speaker 1: in Star Trek quite a bit. There are two things
Speaker 1: that you have to remember about Star Trek tractor beams.
Speaker 1: They can pull just about anything anywhere, 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 beans, 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 dar Vader to face
Speaker 1: off against Obi one 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 maybe one or two. Episode four is amazing. If
Speaker 1: you have not seen it, you need to go check
Speaker 1: it out. But anyway, yeah, so, so science fiction is
Speaker 1: one of those things that is a really useful tool
Speaker 1: for storytellers. Uh. If they have a story about a
Speaker 1: ship encountering some sort of wreck or other kind of
Speaker 1: of body out in space, it needs to be pulled away.
Speaker 1: And the nice thing is is that we've got scientists
Speaker 1: here on Earth who are saying, hey, how can we
Speaker 1: do this science fiction thing for reels right? Knowing how
Speaker 1: light behaves and uh, and maybe finding new ways to
Speaker 1: make light behave in perhaps an unexpected fashion. Well, I
Speaker 1: suspect that, in fact, Star Trek used some actual research
Speaker 1: that was going on in the nineteen sixties as a
Speaker 1: basis for their tractor beam, because according according to the
Speaker 1: Star Trek universe, the way that their tractor beam works
Speaker 1: is it's actually WILLI a graviton force beam and I
Speaker 1: just made little quote marks in the air for the
Speaker 1: benefit of nobody really, so that was weird. Gravitons are
Speaker 1: hypothetical particles that that essentially mediate the force of gravity. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're hypothetical because we have not observed an actual graviton.
Speaker 1: We don't know how we would We don't we know
Speaker 1: that in order for our quantum model of the universe
Speaker 1: to make sense, we need something like a graviton to
Speaker 1: exist to explain the force of gravity. There are four
Speaker 1: fundamental forces in the universe. There's strong, nuclear, weak, nuclear,
Speaker 1: electro magnetic, and gravity. Out of those, gravity is the weakest,
Speaker 1: but it's also the one that we cannot easily incorporate
Speaker 1: into the quantum model of the physics. Right, It's sort
Speaker 1: of assumed by Einstein's general theory of relativity that gravitational
Speaker 1: waves are a thing that exists, that ripples in the
Speaker 1: spacetime continuum, caused by very large moving objects, particularly, but
Speaker 1: nobody has detected these. So so really the way we
Speaker 1: observe this is through the force of gravity. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's we can see the outcome just exactly so.
Speaker 1: And to explain to you guys how weak gravity is
Speaker 1: in comparison to the other forces, here's a very simple,
Speaker 1: uh experiment anyone can do anyone who has access to
Speaker 1: a comb and a balloon. So let's say you've got,
Speaker 1: you know, get a balloon. You just inflate the balloon
Speaker 1: with oxygen. Don't do helium because that will negate the
Speaker 1: results of this test. Check. So oxygen inflated balloon, you
Speaker 1: sat down on a table. Gravity is pulling the balloon downward.
Speaker 1: I am oversimplifying here, so physicists please don't don't write
Speaker 1: in and complain. But the balloon is held to the
Speaker 1: table in part due to friction, but also in part
Speaker 1: due to gravity. If you were to take your comb
Speaker 1: and rub it against say a sweater, and get build
Speaker 1: up some stack electricity on the comb, and then touch
Speaker 1: the comb to the balloon and lift, you would see
Speaker 1: that the stag electricity that was generated while you were
Speaker 1: rubbing the comb against your your sweater would be enough
Speaker 1: to attract the balloon and lifted off the table. That
Speaker 1: means that the any amount of electromatic force, the static
Speaker 1: is stronger than the gravity. And the gravity, yeah, You've
Speaker 1: got an entire planet beneath you that is got this
Speaker 1: very strong gravitational pull, strong in comparison to other things
Speaker 1: that we directly observe throughout the day, and yet it
Speaker 1: is dwarfed by strong enough Yeah, strong enough to pull
Speaker 1: a bowling ball from the top of tower. Right but
Speaker 1: right so, and and gravity just so. To complete the
Speaker 1: whole picture here, it depends on two things. It depends
Speaker 1: on really you have to have two different bodies, but
Speaker 1: it depends on the body's mass and their distance from
Speaker 1: one another. But they do exert gravity, a gravitational pull
Speaker 1: against each other. So, for instance, I have a cup
Speaker 1: of tea in front of me, I am exerting a
Speaker 1: very tiny gravitational pull on the cup of tea, and
Speaker 1: it is exerting a very tiny gravitational poll 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 beaming anything, is to use the gravity of one
Speaker 1: object to influence the movement of another object. Now, this
Speaker 1: 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 chance potential to yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be a bad thing. Yes, because we all
Speaker 1: learned in the documentary arm Again, Yes, that wonderful documentary
Speaker 1: that taught me that Steve bu Simmy is a better
Speaker 1: singer than Ben affleck Uh, which I had no way
Speaker 1: of knowing until I saw that anyway that one way
Speaker 1: of potentially deflecting the asteroid would be to send a
Speaker 1: spacecraft up so that you move the spacecraft so it's
Speaker 1: close enough to the asteroid so that they are are
Speaker 1: pulling one another with a gravitational pull, and then you
Speaker 1: use thrusters with the spacecraft to just very slowly push
Speaker 1: just not really really it's pull. You're yeah, you're pulling
Speaker 1: the asteroid because as you move the spacecraft away, the
Speaker 1: gravitational pull makes the asteroid move with it, and all
Speaker 1: you have to do is move it. The further out
Speaker 1: you go from Earth, the less you need to move
Speaker 1: the 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 make enough difference to not kill everything on it, right,
Speaker 1: it'll miss the planet in hirely, 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, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not made of light. It doesn't do
Speaker 1: that cool visual effect that you have a sound effect,
Speaker 1: which 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 different episode. Um. And So, in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, people were really excited about detecting gravitational waves,
Speaker 1: and a few people in fact, suggested that we might
Speaker 1: make a gravity laser. A couple of people, Helper and Laurent,
Speaker 1: proposed that this could be called a gazer, which I
Speaker 1: think is a terrific word. Yeah, and I think means
Speaker 1: 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 ya? Um.
Speaker 1: They proposed that we could vibrate some types of electric
Speaker 1: crystals and create a whole thing. And but that's it's
Speaker 1: never really come to fruition because the above re we
Speaker 1: have never discovered gravitons, We have never measured gravitational waves.
Speaker 1: Right for us to be able to create an object
Speaker 1: that would use gravitons to to make a tractor being
Speaker 1: we first sort of need to prove that gravitons in
Speaker 1: fact exist, because again they're hypothetical right now. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like the Higgs boson, right The Higgs boson was
Speaker 1: a theoretical particle that physicists said, for our understanding of
Speaker 1: the universe to make sense, we need this thing to
Speaker 1: exist to explain why matter has mass, same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: In order for our understanding of gravity to make sense,
Speaker 1: within the within the framework that we have of our
Speaker 1: knowledge of the universe, knowing that we are by our
Speaker 1: very nature limited in our understanding, a graviton needs to
Speaker 1: exist for that model to really make sense. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about mathematically, yes, these things to exist, but in reality,
Speaker 1: we just haven't tracked it down yet. So if we
Speaker 1: ever do, maybe we can make some sort of technology
Speaker 1: that can take advantage of that. But until then, until then,
Speaker 1: maybe no gravitational lasers. Yeah, I personally hope that we
Speaker 1: do crack that nut, because that would be I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be an incredibly useful tool, and not just
Speaker 1: in the context of space exploration. That's the one that
Speaker 1: we all think about because 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 uh well in implementation here on Earth in 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 yeah, we'll talk a bit in a second
Speaker 1: all about how some scientists are making micro versions of
Speaker 1: tractor beams here on Earth and what those could be
Speaker 1: used for. But first let's take a moment to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor for this episode, and now back to the show.
Speaker 1: All right, so we've talked about using gravity to create
Speaker 1: a tractor beam like effect, or possibly even using gravitons,
Speaker 1: assuming we ever understand them. But that's not the only
Speaker 1: way scientists are looking into creating a tractor beam like device.
Speaker 1: There's actually been quite a bit of news over the
Speaker 1: last decade about scientists using various ways of manipulating light
Speaker 1: to pull an object as opposed to push it away. Right,
Speaker 1: Starting way back in six people started playing with what's
Speaker 1: called optical tweezers, which are lasers that are capable of
Speaker 1: manipulating molecules and moving them with precision. And now this
Speaker 1: is not pulling a particle towards the light source, so
Speaker 1: it's not technically a tractor beam, right, but it is.
Speaker 1: It is a method of manipulating microscopic particles very precisely.
Speaker 1: So if you're thinking about a plane like an X
Speaker 1: and Y axis, you could move particles within the X
Speaker 1: and y axis, but you're not moving them along the
Speaker 1: Z axis. That would be you know, from the source
Speaker 1: of light to wherever the particle is. So in relation
Speaker 1: to the source of light, the particle would not get
Speaker 1: closer further away, but you could trap it and move
Speaker 1: it within that X Y plane. That's that's my understanding. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and these are well I I that's my understanding as well.
Speaker 1: These these laser beams that are being used for this
Speaker 1: have a Gaussian intensity profiles, which means that they're brighter
Speaker 1: in the center than they are at the edges. Right.
Speaker 1: A Gaussian distribution is a normal distribution, and it can
Speaker 1: be for anything from lasers to really you can even
Speaker 1: see this in social sciences where you do a survey
Speaker 1: and you have a Bell curve that shows a normal
Speaker 1: distribution that's essentially a Gaussian distribution. So, Okay, light has momentum, right, right,
Speaker 1: and so when it hits an object, the object bends
Speaker 1: the light which changes its momentum, and thus the object
Speaker 1: is pushed back equally and oppositely by the light. Okay,
Speaker 1: I see, so the lights momentum has changed. The object's
Speaker 1: momentum is also changed correct according to the conservation of momentum,
Speaker 1: which you can see in normal, non microscopic classic physics. Right.
Speaker 1: And so the Gaussian beam is important because if the
Speaker 1: sample gets off center in the beam, the weaker light
Speaker 1: at the edges is bending around the object and pushing
Speaker 1: it out, but the stronger lighted center is bending around
Speaker 1: it and pushing it back in, and the stronger force wins.
Speaker 1: I see. Okay, Yeah, that makes way more sense than
Speaker 1: everything else I read, because everything I read was a
Speaker 1: lot of this. This research that we did for this
Speaker 1: Pathicunar podcast is in is from scientific journals and uh.
Speaker 1: And this is a good point for us to make.
Speaker 1: Lauren and I we're advocates of science education. Absolutely, we
Speaker 1: both love science. That being said, neither of us are scientists,
Speaker 1: and we certainly are not particle physicists. And so when
Speaker 1: you get onto the quantum level, there's a certain level
Speaker 1: of understanding that we are able to achieve. And beyond that,
Speaker 1: this stuff is it is like magic to us. So
Speaker 1: we're going to explain things as best we can, but
Speaker 1: please understand there are subtleties to this that we cannot
Speaker 1: easily explain because we haven't dedicated our lives to understanding
Speaker 1: them exact and by so if we get anything wrong,
Speaker 1: please do right us in Um, we love getting that
Speaker 1: kind of feedback, right, Yeah, No, we definitely want to
Speaker 1: to 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 predibly smart people have
Speaker 1: discovered ways of using light to act pull things towards
Speaker 1: 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 people. The main research
Speaker 1: that I've read from this was from Australian National University
Speaker 1: around so pretty recently, and the the idea of this
Speaker 1: one is that they use a hollow laser beam to
Speaker 1: trap light absorbing particles, and um, they get trapped in
Speaker 1: the center of this laser beam because the heated air
Speaker 1: molecules around them are pushing in on them goutches, so
Speaker 1: they cannot they can't escape the laser beam. They're stuck
Speaker 1: in that little hollow center, in the hollow center in
Speaker 1: the in the the doughnut 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 the brightness of the two of them there by
Speaker 1: heating and cooling the air around the molecules and and
Speaker 1: then therefore have the molecules move up and down as
Speaker 1: they will through this hollow tube of light. Wow. So
Speaker 1: so you're using two different lasers in order to make
Speaker 1: that maintain this kind of movement. That makes sense, I
Speaker 1: 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, municially
Speaker 1: manipulating DNA strands is something the optical tweezers have been
Speaker 1: used extensively for, right, so that there there are real
Speaker 1: uses for this. But these are not the same technologies
Speaker 1: that will let us move spacecraft like toe spacecraft away.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about why that is when we get
Speaker 1: a little further in, because there are a couple of
Speaker 1: other 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 uh uh, how is it? It's higher pressure
Speaker 1: underwing than over awing and therefore letting a plane lift
Speaker 1: off the ground in the game. Before we get any
Speaker 1: further physicists, that's also an oversimplification, and we acknowledge that, yes,
Speaker 1: there's more than geology, there's more than just that when
Speaker 1: it comes to get an airplane off the ground. Also,
Speaker 1: we know all about the other forward momentum and everything else,
Speaker 1: but but that that is the concept of lift. Thank you,
Speaker 1: And so to get slightly fewer angry emails, it's only
Speaker 1: because Chris and I received all those emails already, but
Speaker 1: but deservedly so right, oh no, absolutely, yes we love
Speaker 1: negative feedback. But so I nearly spit tea all over
Speaker 1: my laptop. Please don't take that as a as a
Speaker 1: Please don't take Lawrence Lauren's statement as a means to
Speaker 1: send us the most negative feedback ever, because my feelings
Speaker 1: do get hurt, and I apparent you just made a
Speaker 1: complete liar out of me. That you almost snorfing your
Speaker 1: tea completely made me crack up. Sorry about that, 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 please standing uniform stream of
Speaker 1: light that's fast. This is all blowing my mind because
Speaker 1: before we did this research, I never knew about these
Speaker 1: different properties of light and and it just it really
Speaker 1: stresses to me one amazing universe. This is, you know,
Speaker 1: to to know that things behave on such a different
Speaker 1: level than my previous understanding, and also illustrates quite effectively
Speaker 1: how ignorant I am. But I love to learn, so
Speaker 1: that's okay. Yeah we get we get paid to learn
Speaker 1: this stuff and pass it on to you, which is
Speaker 1: basically the most exciting thing. Um. One of the other
Speaker 1: categories that I ran across were optical conveyors, which are
Speaker 1: really fun. Those are those are the ones that are
Speaker 1: using Bessel beams, and I think I think Jonathan has
Speaker 1: a whole section about this one. Yeah, not a whole section,
Speaker 1: but I can at least tell you what a Bessel
Speaker 1: beam is. 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 electroma, metic, it can
Speaker 1: be acoustic, it could be gravitational. It doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: what the type of radiation is, it's the form it takes.
Speaker 1: And that form is a radiation where the amplitude is
Speaker 1: described by a Bessel function of the first kind. Does
Speaker 1: that 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 bessel beam would
Speaker 1: be that if you were to just interrupt part of
Speaker 1: vessel beam. Let's let's imagine that the vessel beam is
Speaker 1: as big around as a pencil, Okay, just for the
Speaker 1: purposes of illustration, and then imagine that you had, uh
Speaker 1: use 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 again. 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, uh, 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 UH emulate many of its features, but a
Speaker 1: true one is beyond our capability. That is the short
Speaker 1: and sweet definition of vessel beam. And do keep in
Speaker 1: mind we're not just talking lasers. Like I said, it
Speaker 1: could even be acoustic. So you could create a vessel
Speaker 1: beam of acoustic energy and make a noise that could
Speaker 1: be heard perfectly at the destination, no matter how far
Speaker 1: away it was. That that is fascinating, pretty awesome, that's terrific.
Speaker 1: It's Jonathan from again here to once again break up
Speaker 1: the episodes that we can take a quick break. So
Speaker 1: researchers are using these. Specifically, some people at New York University,
Speaker 1: building on research by a Chinese team at the a
Speaker 1: Star Data Storage Institute, I believe in around two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: two twelve people have been working on using a lens
Speaker 1: to bend and overlap two of these vessel beams um
Speaker 1: thereby creating what I can crudely, crudely describe as kind
Speaker 1: of a Strobe effect that will, Okay, it'll hit the
Speaker 1: front of a particle, and because of that, because it
Speaker 1: can reform around an object, it will reform behind the particle.
Speaker 1: With enough energy that it actually pushes the particle back
Speaker 1: towards the light source. All right, so what's happening is
Speaker 1: the photon is is hitting the particle in such a
Speaker 1: way as to give it a little kick back toward
Speaker 1: the actual source of the photons correct, which is kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. It's awesome. Like there was one point where
Speaker 1: I was reading one of these descriptions and I was thinking,
Speaker 1: the only way I could describe this is if you
Speaker 1: were thinking about having a smaller particles being pushed forward,
Speaker 1: because larger particles are sinking down, so instead of being
Speaker 1: pushed down, they're actually going up. And then the more
Speaker 1: I read about the more I'm like, this is a
Speaker 1: complete misunderstanding of this, and I cannot go with this analogy.
Speaker 1: And that's what I thought. I hope Lauren has got discovered,
Speaker 1: and luckily she did. Yes. I like the physics, but
Speaker 1: physics were always the interesting part to me. I was
Speaker 1: always terrible at algebra, but really good at geometry. I
Speaker 1: love classical physics. Quantum physics makes my head hurt. I
Speaker 1: just that's the fun headache. I like the I like
Speaker 1: the quantum physics headache. If better you than me, what's
Speaker 1: that terrific quote. Off. If you're not kind of upset
Speaker 1: by quantum physics, you haven't understood it properly. I think
Speaker 1: all of us haven't understood it properly. I think the
Speaker 1: people who haven't understood it probably the most have the
Speaker 1: biggest headaches. Those are quantum physicists anyway. But then I
Speaker 1: say that as as I you know, every quantum physicist
Speaker 1: interview I've said I've watched tends to include a question
Speaker 1: that's all similar to, but do you really understand what
Speaker 1: it is you're talking about? And the quantum physicist almost
Speaker 1: always says, you know, there's a certain level where I
Speaker 1: don't like. There's certain things that you just say, all right,
Speaker 1: this is how it is, because that's how it is.
Speaker 1: But to be able to answer, I can't. And so it's,
Speaker 1: you know, one of those things you just have to accept.
Speaker 1: And my brain starts to melt out of your ears. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of screaming and waving of fists inside
Speaker 1: the craneyde the brain. Yeah. But so the special beaming
Speaker 1: optical conveyor technology might be an interesting practical use for
Speaker 1: it could be to test the tensile strength of cells.
Speaker 1: For example, if if a cell has been infected with malaria.
Speaker 1: It's more rigid than a normal blood cell, and so
Speaker 1: it could be super useful in tiny microscopic medical purposes.
Speaker 1: Similar to another breakthrough that was very recent as of
Speaker 1: the 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 for fos, about four hundred 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 fomes 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 can 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 selectively manipulate
Speaker 1: particles of a certain size while not affecting particles of
Speaker 1: another size. Yeah, there's a there's a little video of this,
Speaker 1: by the way, in a press release. We'll link it
Speaker 1: somewhere on our on our tech staff media. Yeah, 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 the ones you're interested in, those
Speaker 1: are the ones you can manipulate and uh and that
Speaker 1: is a huge breakthrough you're talking about just by by
Speaker 1: again changing the nature of the light itself, being able
Speaker 1: to affect very specific sizes of particles and it doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter what the particle is made out of. They
Speaker 1: were using polystyrene in a liquid solution. So again, this
Speaker 1: was another breakthrough was that this was something that could
Speaker 1: work within a liquid, making it very useful for medical purposes.
Speaker 1: So if you wanted to take a blood cell and
Speaker 1: you needed to move certain particles in that blood cell
Speaker 1: out or off to a side so that you could
Speaker 1: either examine them more closely, or perhaps get them out
Speaker 1: of the way so you can examine something else in
Speaker 1: the blood cell more closely. It would be a very
Speaker 1: useful tool. One description that I saw of this said that,
Speaker 1: and and this one in particular. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of very intelligent people have said very ierdite things about
Speaker 1: all of the rest of these forms of tractor beam manipulation,
Speaker 1: and I read them and have said them back to you.
Speaker 1: This one is so new that not that many people
Speaker 1: who are smarter than us have really said that many
Speaker 1: things about it, and so therefore my understanding is tenuous.
Speaker 1: But one explanation that I saw said that they used
Speaker 1: a mirror to bounce the laser beam back across itself,
Speaker 1: interfering with the head on photons and thereby pushing right.
Speaker 1: And the the interesting thing to me was that it
Speaker 1: was through that interference that creates this pulling. It was not, however,
Speaker 1: because you hear mirror and you think, oh, well, all
Speaker 1: they're doing is shooting the photons, bouncing it off the mirror,
Speaker 1: and then the photons hit the particle and then push
Speaker 1: the particle. But that's not what's happened. That's not what's happening.
Speaker 1: It's the it's the interaction of the the oncoming beam
Speaker 1: and the reflected beam that create this pulling motion. And
Speaker 1: that to me is phenomenal because at first I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: what they're really doing is just yeah, they're just they're
Speaker 1: just pushing, they're not pulling. But that's not the case.
Speaker 1: That actually is pulling actually the light source 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 make 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 had.
Speaker 1: I guess what we're doing. After the podcast is over,
Speaker 1: you get to hear a song. Alright, trip, so uh
Speaker 1: we we We alluded to the fact that this is
Speaker 1: stuff that works on a microscopic scale and would not
Speaker 1: translate to macroscopic Yes, and here's the reason why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the reason why is that all of all of this
Speaker 1: work with lasers. Lasers, of course, um can burn stuff.
Speaker 1: And if you had a big enough laser to move
Speaker 1: you know, the one of the physicists I think mentioned
Speaker 1: a football. I assume that they were meaning a soccer
Speaker 1: ball because they were from Scotland, and that was Thomas Sissmar.
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 some one else who's saying,
Speaker 1: why do you have this flaming soccer ball in the
Speaker 1: middle 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. I hope you guys enjoyed that
Speaker 1: classic episode of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes, send me an email. The addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or you can draw
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle it
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Speaker 1: stuff podcast dot com. There you're going to find an
Speaker 1: archive of every episode we've ever recorded. It's entirely searchable,
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