TEK - movies and TV series
Tek Central for fans of William Shatner TEK books and TV series
Tractor beam
The Independent writes: Sci-fi geeks love tractor beams. Despite the fact that they're a fictitious method of using a beam of light either to immobilise or to move an object, one Star Trek fan page goes into great detail about their powers: "In 2372," it reads, "Lieutenant Commander Worf of the USS Defiant suggested using a carefully modulated tractor beam against a Vor'cha-class attack cruiser. It deflected some of the vessel's disruptor fire and reduced its effectiveness by 50 per cent." But the development of the microscopic equivalent of tractor beams ? known as optical tweezers ? has allowed lasers to be used to pick up and move around individual cells.
This video [d95.com/tractor] shows "DNA knitting" using this technique at VU University, Amsterdam, and recent work at MIT has used similar methods to build structures on the surface of microchips. Long term, this could lead to the development of disease detectors, or biological interfaces with electronics.
