Earlier this year researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) discovered a way to levitate and propel objects using only light.
Researchers did this by creating specific nanoscale patterning on the objects’ surfaces. The research is still only in the beginning stages, but still very exciting seeing as how it had not been done previously.
The scientists involved used tiny optical tweezers and focused laser light to move and manipulate small objects over limited distances. They found that by adding a specific nanoscale pattern to the surface of an object, the light beam can lock onto the pattern of the object.
The key in all of this is the nanoscale patterns. This enables not only the levitation but the ability to manipulate and turn the object. This also creates a specifying encoding ability by the object and provides stability.
A postdoctoral scholar on the project, Ognjen Ilic, is the study’s first author. Here he gives an analogy: “One can levitate a ping pong ball using a steady stream of air from a hairdryer. But it wouldn’t work if the ping pong ball were too big, or if it were too far away from the hairdryer, and so on.”
The team has aspirations that hopefully within 20 years we will be using this technology to send spacecraft to other planets. They believe the laser light beams can operate and stay locked on the object from millions of miles away.
Harry A. Atwater Jr. is the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science, and the Director of Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, he explains here:
We have come up with a method that could levitate macroscopic objects. There is an audaciously interesting application to use this technique as a means for propulsion of a new generation of spacecraft. We’re a long way from actually doing that, but we are in the process of testing out the principles.
A paper titled “Self-stabilizing photonic levitation and propulsion of nanostructured macroscopic objects” was published in Nature Photonics. Funding was provided by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
As for now, the team hopes to utilize this technology for use in the construction of circuit boards and then move onto larger objects. With some luck maybe they will achieve sending spacecraft for interplanetary travel sooner than 20 years from now!
