A team of scientists in Japan have utilised sound waves to levitate a small polystyrene ball.

What makes this feat different to similar exercises carried out in the past is that the team from Tokyo Metropolitan University managed to lift this object up from a rigid surface.

The researchers state in the study paper that this is the very first instance of a “non-contact pick-up of a particle on a rigid stage with reflection using a multi-channel-controlled hemispherical ultrasonic transducer array”.

Potential technical hurdles to overcome included being able to control the sound waves in real-time when levitating an object. To combat this, the transducer array that was previously mentioned was divided into eight blocks, with an acoustic trap correspondingly conjured due to the amplitude and phase of the sound waves in each of the blocks being optimised according to an article on New Atlas. This trap then lifted the chosen object.

Work is now underway to improve the consistency of this technique.

“We can not succeed to pick up constantly. When we move a particle, it sometimes scatters away. In future studies, the robustness of the proposed method will be improved for practical use of non-contact pick-up,” said the team in the study’s paper.