ANSWERS: 5
  • 5-23-2017 All the links go to other articles on SN. That is not a well respected source.
    • Linda Joy
      The link works perfectly. I'd like to encourage you to post questions and links from your superior sources so that we can all learn more.
    • Jewels Vern
      Nobody else has ever heard of a tractor beam in real life, so it is up to Science News to establish credibility. I suspect they are using the term as click bait, since they don't actually explain how any such effect is produced. As far as the rest of the world knows, the only "tractor beam" is a magnet.
  • Very interesting. Don't worry about others saying your sources aren't good enough. You'll see a lot of that when you list sources for religious debates. Your sources will always get called invalid. Just list them if YOU feel they're valid and ignore the - my sources are superior to your sources - nonsense.
    • Linda Joy
      It seems this site has a tractor beam on me. Everytime I think about leaving someone or something draws me back. Oddly enough this time both were the same.
    • Jewels Vern
      Yeah, I get that a lot. Like I post a careful description of the science, and some dingbat replies "Oh yeah? What's your source?" There was one forum where I idly mentioned that mothers have a responsibility to teach their children good manners. Sure enough, the response was, and I quote, "Oh yeah? What's your source?"
    • Linda Joy
      Lol! I post sources in case others would like to learn. I seldom get asked to cite my sources.
    • Jewels Vern
      People demand my sources when they can't refute my science.
  • Technology surges ahead constantly, while we're busy , amazing things develop. I'm sorry I wont be around in thousand years to see where it gets to. ...if we didn't destroy the planet or give it over to a dictator by then, so progress stops. But...unfettered, a thousand years should find us flying to other star systems, defying gravity, certainly a tractor beam will be had, and ways of making things invisible and making things repair themselves (all that nano tech is going to yield a whole new field of life changes soon). But, as you may have noticed on Star Trek, in order to make it all possible, the author had to get rid of money and power as things people devote their energies to, to end all the warring and enslaving, and the inequity of class limitations ..to give fully funded opportunity to ALL, so our species' potential is allowed to develop in full. Will we? No. We will use technology to keep ALL the money and power in the hands of probably one guy, and/or just a very small attendant group. The rest of us will be watched and disallowed from even having our own thoughts. ..It's like, if you want to see where things will be after some time, just look at the direction they've been heading towards. I think we're headed towards being voiceless, rightless, privacy-less slaves without any hope for escaping. .....and then of course, the violence.... perhaps the best thing would be an asteroid. Mankind needs to be blotted out so the cockroaches can evolve into something more constructive and actually moral.
    • Linda Joy
      You are who you choose to be.
  • Light does travel in waves yes, but it is also made of particals. No one knows why and what light actually is.
  • Weird. I actually worked with some of the professors that wrote the original paper in Science when I was in grad school nearly 15 years ago. I'm quite shocked that Science News would have taken the research that direction, but, well, they are not "wrong" in their conclusions, just maybe a beat or two off. The idea of optical tweezers goes back quite a few years, and they have been used reliably for other research on very small scales (like individual atoms and even some small molecules). The premise that light does this because of vague quantum stuff, and electrons obey the same quantum rules yet have much more mass, therefore this will work on a much larger scale if done with matter is, well, missing the boat on a lot of nuances, but I suppose, in a scifi world, it could work. But don't expect cathode ray tractor beams to be available any time soon.

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