Creating the Starship Enterprise

Trekkies, rejoice! Scientists have figured out how to create a real tractor beam. For those not in the know, tractor beams were used to pull foreign objects towards the Starship Enterprise.

Researchers at St. Andrews and the Institute of Scientific Instruments, or ISI, in the Czech Republic have figured out a way of generating an optical field that can reverse the radiation pressure of light.

German astronomer Johannes Kepler noticed in 1619 that comet tails point away from the sun, a radiation force that the St. Andrews and ISI team hoped to reverse

I’m still waiting for a car that folds up into a briefcase.