If you’re familiar with any amount of sci-fi, you’ve probably been made aware of the tractor beam. Often used in fiction to grab rogue objects or opposing spaceships and move them around, they usually consist of a nondescript beam of light shooting out from a craft to envelop something and hold it in place.

Insert a hand-wavey explanation of the “science” behind the future-tech here.

But that explanation may soon be less hand-wavey, and the tech may be less future. Because a real-life tractor beam is currently under development at the University of Colorado Boulder, with the goal of eventually helping to clean up space junk.

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