A tractor beam—a special beam of electromagnetic radiation that draws particles toward it instead of pushing them away—might be a concept straight from Star Trek, but scientists from the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS) have recently taken steps toward a more portable way to generate one in real life.

The Melbourne-based research team says that this could lead to better, less invasive technology that could perform a biopsy without the cell trauma caused even by the smallest handheld tweezers or needles. The team's paper appears now in the peer-reviewed journal ACS Photonics (from the American Chemical Society).