A beam of light has been used to provide lift to a micrometre-sized curved rod in a manner analogous to that by which air passing over a wing provides lift to birds and aeroplanes.
Grover Swartzlander at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and his colleagues shone a weakly focused laser beam through the roughly semi-cylindrical rods, which refracted the light rays. This refraction changed the direction of the rays' momentum, causing an equal and opposite momentum change on the rods themselves. Because of the rods' asymmetrical shape, the momentum shift was directed more towards one side, driving the rods upwards at around 2.5 micrometres per second.
The researchers suggest that the technique could be used to transport microscopic machines through liquids and to help to steer solar sails in spacecraft.
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Optics: Taking wing on a beam of light. Nature 468, 734–735 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/468734e
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/468734e
