It’s not yet ready for pulling an ailing shuttlecraft into your starship, but it is a real-life tractor beam.
A tractor beam—a special beam of electromagnetic radiation that draws particles toward it instead of pushing them away—might be a concept straight from Star Trek, but scientists from the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) have recently taken steps toward a more portable way to generate one in real life.
…
To be clear, this paper details the new metasurface—the “plate” that turns regular light into a spiraling tractor beam. It’s not about the beam’s ability to then draw in particles, which is well established at this point.
Ha. Getting a chuckle here. In Star Trek, the process is reversed – it’s supposedly a near-impossible task to turn the tractor beam into a repulsor beam. But in TNG, Wesley figures it out. I can’t recall any subsequent episode, in the entire Trek timeline, where this gets used again.
Fun trivia – James Doohan was the person who came up with the concept of a tractor beam. He was an amazing man with an amazing life.
Amazing man, sorry.
No problem. I edited it for you.