one small step towards SF-tech

The SF-lovers here will have encountered the tractor beam, which manipulates even large objects in space.

Now some researchers succeeded in applying a force on a torison pednulum using laser light.

https://phys.org/news/2023-01-optical-tractor-macroscopic.html
for thsoe able to go beyond the payway:

https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-31-2-2665&id=525052

@Ponderable
I don't know how sci fi that is since we all know photons impart kinetic energy to whatever they hit but this idea of lasers as tractor beams have been around for a while.

@sonhouse said
@Ponderable
I don't know how sci fi that is since we all know photons impart kinetic energy to whatever they hit but this idea of lasers as tractor beams have been around for a while.

Yes, it is a quantitative step not a qualitative one.