A water-based tractor beam that could contain oil spills and manipulate floating objects cannot yet be explained by mathematical theory. Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get ...

The tractor beam is a long-serving staple of sci-fi, but now Australian researchers have created a new type of real-world version. While it won't exactly be capturing enemy spaceships anytime soon, ...

A team of engineers is working on a real life “tractor beam,” a staple device of spacefaring sci-fi that can push and pull objects at a distance without making contact. Tantalizingly, their early ...

It seems like we’re getting closer to the Star Trek future by leaps and bounds these days. We recently learned that a NASA scientist has set his sights on building a warp drive, and now news has come ...

A tractor beam can be loosely defined as a device that uses a beam of energy to attract an object from a distance. For many years, these devices have been largely hypothetical and confined to the ...

When I think of a tractor beam – a stream of energy that can move objects – I imagine a ray emerging from a spaceship gripping an object outside and pulling it in. In my mind this spaceship is the ...

Tractor beams make intuitive sense. Matter and energy interact with each other in countless ways throughout the Universe. Magnetism and gravity are both natural forces that can draw objects together, ...