Acoustic tractor beams could lead to levitating humans
LG wants levitating speakers in every home, but what about gravity-defying humans? Well, science could well be on its way to making us float too, thanks to a breakthrough in sonic levitation . Engineers from the University of Bristol have demonstrated that it's possible to trap (essentially levitate) objects larger than the wavelength of sound in an acoustic tractor beam -- a tricky feat due to rotating sound field transfers causing objects to spin uncontrollably. The discovery could open the doors to real-life applications, including the contactless control of drug capsules or micro-surgical implements within the body, and touchless assembly on production lines. Most exciting of all, it could lead to the levitation of larger objects like (you guessed it) humans. The Bristol team managed to control the rate of rotation using rapidly fluctuating acoustic vortices, which the researchers describe as "tornadoes of sound, made of a twister-like structure with loud sound surr...