MIT has created a chip-based optical tractor beam that can focus a penetrating beam of light over 5 millimeters away from the surface of the chip itself.
Why it matters: Just like teleportation, cloning, and invisibility, tractor beams are one of those sci-fi movie tropes many of us have wished were real. But thanks to some researchers at MIT, we now have a miniaturized version small enough to fit on a single chip. While it can’t pull entire ships as shown in Star Wars just yet, it can still manipulate biological particles like cells and DNA.
MIT has created a chip-based optical tractor beam that can focus a penetrating beam of light over 5 millimeters away from the surface of the chip itself. That might not sound like much, but it’s a game-changer compared to previous integrated « optical tweezers » that could only work within a few microns of the chip. Those older approaches essentially had to remove cells from their sterile glass containers (used commonly for biological experiments) and place them directly on the chip’s surface, raising contamination risks.
