Question: The thing that you do by moving cells with light is that telekenisis

Susan Skelton answered on 20 Nov 2013:

Hi tayyab!
I hope you enjoyed the chat today?
No, it’s not telekinesis, but sometimes it seems like it! Telekinesis is the idea that we might be able to move things just by thinking about it. I don’t believe this is possible, as I don’t think there is a way we can make a physical force on something just by thinking! (Though sometimes I wish I could tidy my house just by thinking about it! 😉 )

The way I move cells is using light. Light is made up of lots of tiny particles, called ‘photons’. When these light particles bounce off a cell, they push the cell forward. We can understand this by thinking of what happens in a game of snooker. When the white ball bounces off a coloured ball, the coloured ball is pushed forward, and hopefully rolls into a pocket! The same thing happens in my experiment: the light particle bounces off the cell, pushing the cell forward!

Each light particle only pushes the cell a tiny little bit, not enough to move it by itself. So I use really strong light beams called lasers. This means I have lots and lots of light particles, all pushing together. When there are enough of them, they all add up to enough force to push the cell!

By concentrating all the light into a tight spot, I can hold cells at the narrowest part of my light beam. Then by moving the position of the beam around, I can pick up and move the cell too! It’s like magic….only better, because we understand it and can control it to do useful medical research on cells.