It sounds like something from a sci-fi movie, but physicists have made it a reality: A laser tractor beam, bright around the edges and dark in its center, that can repel and attract objects.

According to physicists at The Australian National University, the laser tractor beam is a record breaker, moving particles 100 times further than previous experiments.

“Demonstration of a large scale laser beam like this is a kind of holy grail for laser physicists,” exclaimed Wieslaw Krolikowski, a professor at The Australian National University’s Research School of Physics and Engineering.

The new method is adaptable because it calls for only a single laser beam. It has many uses, researchers contend, including the recovery of small particles for testing.

While the laser tractor beam can currently move particles one fifth of a millimeter in diameter up to 20 centimeters, physicists anticipate that the technology could be scaled up.

“Because lasers retain their beam quality for such long distances, this could work over meters. Our lab just was not big enough to show it,” explained co-author Vladlen Shvedov, a key player on the ANU project .

According to physicists, this laser tractor beam depends on the energy of the laser heating up the particles and the air encircling them. The physicists validated the effect on gold-coated hollow glass particles.

Energy from the laser impacts the particle and moves across its surface, forming hotspots. Air particles slamming into the hotspots heat up and race away from the surface, causing the particle to draw back in the opposite direction. The particles can be moved by adjusting the polarization of the laser beam.

“We have devised a technique that can create unusual states of polarization in the doughnut shaped laser beam, such as star-shaped nor ring polarized,” posited Cyril Hnatovsky. “We can move smoothly from one polarization to another and thereby stop the particle or reverse its direction at will.”

Interesting fact: According to The New Yorker, the term “tractor beam” is believed to have first been used in 1947 in “Spacehounds of IPC,” a book by Edward E. Smith.