Can you imagine a spaceship that could reach the closest planet outside our solar system, powered and accelerated solely by light? Well, we are one step closer.
A team of physicists from the California Institute of Technology -Caltech- (USA) has developed a method to levitate and propel objects using only light waves. The theoretical feat relies on special nanoscale patterns etched into the surfaces of objects propelled by light.
Researchers from the Laboratory of Applied Physics and Materials Science Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech, suggest that d icha technology could be used to design spacecraft operated light and therefore could travel to planets outside Of the solar system. Scientists have described their theory of light propulsion in detail in the journal Nature Photonics .
Physicists have previously used optical tweezers, fine-tuned lasers, to trap and manipulate nanoparticles. Researchers have also used light to power small engines. But they have also struggled to scale these technologies, something complicated, since at present they only work with very very small objects and at very small distances.
“You can levitate a ping pong ball using a constant stream of air from a hair dryer,” said Ognjen Ilic, a Caltech postdoctoral researcher, in a press release. “But it wouldn’t work if the ping pong ball was too big, or if it was too far from the hair dryer, etc.”
Solving the problems
In the new work, the scientists claim to have developed a technique to propel large objects using only light.
The researchers designed special nanoscale surface patterns to interact with the laser beam and reorient the propelled object so that it is trapped in the stream of photons. The technology does not require a highly focused laser beam. As such, the light source can be millions of miles away.
“We have devised a method that could levitate macroscopic objects ,” said Harry Atwater, leader of the work. “There is a boldly interesting application for using this technique as a means of propelling a new generation of spacecraft. We are a long way from doing it, but we are in the process of testing the principles.”
In their paper on the new propulsion theory, the authors suggest that spacecraft covered with nanoscale patterns could be powered by a laser on Earth, freeing it from the need for heavy fuel . The spacecraft could then – potentially – reach relativistic speeds and visit other stars and planetary systems.
But before the technology is used to accelerate spacecraft, the theory of light propulsion could, according to Atwater, speed up the manufacture of small objects like circuit boards .
Although the theory has yet to be tested in the real world, the researchers say that if developed, it could send a spacecraft to the nearest star outside our solar system in just 20 years.
Referencia: Self-stabilizing photonic levitation and propulsion of nanostructured macroscopic objects. Nature Photonics doi.org/10.1038/s41566-019-0373-y
Crédito imagen: Atwater laboratory
