Fiction to fact: Star Wars tractor beam
Remember the tractor beam from Star Wars that pulled the Millennium Falcon into the Death Star? It might become the latest piece of science fiction to turn science reality, with Spanish and UK researchers finding that sound waves could be used to lift up tiny things and move them. By co-ordinating the timing of the waves, the researchers were able to make objects smaller then 1mm levitate, move, and spin. They also studied the possibility of acoustic structures such as tweezers, twisters, and bottles, which can be used as "tractor beams" for container-less transport.
