Chinese researchers manage to get tractor beam going

Tractor beams – these are the stuff of science fiction, and apparently, our real world is closer to such reality than we originally thought. It seems that Chinese researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai might have figured out how tractor beams work, albeit on the nanoscopic level. They didn’t enlist the help of some witch doctor to grant them magic powers, no sir, instead they turned a laser beam inside out that “should generate a backward pulling force from a forward traveling stream of photons.” – at least that is what Popular Science says. Needless to say, this technology is still in its extremely early stage, so don’t expect any tractor beams to pull down our stealth fighters from the sky in a blaze of glory just yet. To move big things? That is still a far way off into the future, to say the least.