I can still remember one the sequences in Star Wars IV, where the tractor beam from the Death Star pulled in Han Solo’s Falcon into the hangar bay. Well, tractor beams are the stuff of science fiction – or are they? Apparently, it seems that there is some room for tractor beams to work in the near future, although it will not involve any kind of space travel, but rather, on the choppy waters of the sea. Researchers at the Australian National University have worked on a “tractor beam” of sorts, which in reality, is a wave generator.
This particular wave generator would make it a snap for you to float anything that you would like across to its intended destination, and this is made possible courtesy of a system that churns out complex 3D waves that will boast of their own currents, allowing you to pull a target simply through the simple adjustment of the waves’ frequencies and sizes. Not only that, one is also able to produce the kind of flow you desire, based on an on-demand situation.
Far from being handy when one is dealing with massive cargo ships, but it is useful if you would like to control a slew of other smaller objects like a boat.
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