Scientists Actually Did It: They Built a Real Working Tractor Beam

• Scientists built a working tractor beam—the first example of one that pulls objects visible to the naked eye.

• The tests were in highly controlled laboratory experiments.

• A tractor beam like this one could manipulate vehicles and aircraft on Mars.

Tractor beams have long been a staple of sci-fi, but you might not know that they’ve also existed in the real world for some time, albeit at a very small scale. Microscopic tractor beams, better known as optical tweezers, can pull atoms and nanoparticles for use in medicine and research. But we’ve never actually been able to see this happen.
Now we can.
In a new study published in the journal Optic Express, Chinese scientists created the first tractor beam strong enough to manipulate macroscopic objects. That means you can watch the thing work with the naked eye.
Sure, the initial experiment was done in a highly controlled lab, manipulating a specific type of Graphene composite and under a rarefied gaseous environment with a lower pressure than Earth’s atmosphere. But come on! They used a friggin’ laser to move an object!
Scientists Actually Did It: They Built a Real Working Tractor Beam