Tractor Beams

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Trantor
Posts: 780
Joined: Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:52 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany

Tractor Beams

Post by Trantor »

http://phys.org/news/2012-10-physics-du ... essel.html

Another jigsaw piece to SF.

Next please "FTL". :D
sapere aude.

daelyte
Posts: 75
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:53 am

Re: Tractor Beams

Post by daelyte »

"The tractor beam the two built would require far too much energy to scale up to allow for moving large objects, and likely would destroy those objects in the process if such a device were built. But it does suggest that such a device might be possible using another less energy intensive source."

Absalom
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Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:33 am

Re: Tractor Beams

Post by Absalom »

This could be useful for 'space brooms' without much (if any) improvement (if you're going to burn it in the atmosphere anyways, do you really care whether you damage it ;) ).

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Mr Bojangles
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Re: Tractor Beams

Post by Mr Bojangles »

Absalom wrote:This could be useful for 'space brooms' without much (if any) improvement (if you're going to burn it in the atmosphere anyways, do you really care whether you damage it ;) ).
I didn't even know "space brooms" were a thing. Neat idea, though I don't know if a Bessel beam would have the same range as a laser (if we went with NASA's original ground based idea).

The more you know...

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