While there's more experiments and development to go before we ever see a tractor beam at the hospital, the achievement brings us one step closer to the sci-fi future we were always told we'd get, right alongside the personal communicators and jetpacks.

ENGADGET: Researchers build a working tractor beam, on a very small scale

They would thus stick like limpet mines to clots, before being burst by an ultrasonic beam to wash the clots away.

ECONOMIST: The ne plus ultra of medicine | The

But before worrying about the mote in a distant polluter's eye, it makes sense to consider the beam in thine own.

ECONOMIST: Indoor pollution